Should Have Been Nice

Sakura had said that it wouldn’t take long, but the search for a snow dweller was proving to be more difficult than she had anticipated. It really shouldn’t have been this hard— what with their gleaming, midnight scales and large, long bodies— snow dwellers were excessively simple to spot under the snow high up in the mountains. It should have been even easier considering they had a bird’s eye view of the mountains below, and yet, they hadn’t seen so much as a trace of one. It had never been this difficult before, but, of course, now that the demon wanted to get it done as quickly as possible, the complete opposite was happening.

And the guilt was eating her alive.

She had never allowed Ivy around Maggie before without her being there to act as a buffer between the girl and witch. Sakura never wanted to take her in the first place, but Maggie wouldn’t cast the enchantment unless the recipient was present. The woman had always done her best to keep the old hag’s vitriol directed towards herself, quickly deflecting any attention aimed at the girl. But even then, it didn’t matter much. Ivy would still hide behind Sakura, her head hanging as her tears soaked the dirty floor while the witch insulted and reminded her how she was the only fox that the den didn’t want, feeding on both of their misery at once.

Maggie never did bring up Ren or Raz though.

She was awful, but she was also smart enough to value her life when it was threatened by the blade of a glaive to her throat at the first mutterings of the angels, and they were never brought up again.

Not that they were even needed to be. It was enough for Sakura to be there with the constant reminder that neither of them were to breed enough misery to feed the witch without her needing to say a word about them.

Zero was with Ivy now, but that didn’t offer the woman much comfort. She knew that the boy would do the same that she always had, take the brunt of the witch’s words and keep them from Ivy. But the girl’s sorrow was never for herself, and if she cried over Sakura, then she would cry even more over the devil.

The only thing the demon could do was get the deal done and over with as soon as possible.

She monitored the snow as they glided.

White.

Blinding.

Unchanging.

She was losing her patience.

And Ren’s whistling and lazy flaps of his wings wasn’t helping the cause. He had been at ease the entire time, acting as though he had nothing else better to do that day than cling to the vixen as she did the bulk of the searching.

Then again, he probably really did see it that way. While Sakura was desperate to get back to rescue the boy and girl, Ren was enjoying the rendezvous.

“Where the fuck are they?” the growl rumbled from her throat.

The tune ceased. “A little impatient, aren’t we? Better calm down,” the man cautioned lightheartedly. “You’ll blow the thing up if you go at it too hard. Then we’ll be doing this all over again.”

“Shut up! I know!” The angel hadn’t stopped reminding her the entire time of her possible future failure. She was positive he was just trying to agitate her more, making her slip up into doing exactly what he was warning her not to do. “We need to get closer,” she decided. “Go further down the mountains.”

“You don’t want to go up?”

She stared at the endless, bright white of the snow. “I think the snows too deep up here. If there’s a snow dweller, it’s probably buried too far down to see. We need to go where there’s less snow.”

“That makes too much sense,” Ren muttered, shaking his head. “We should do the opposite. Go higher.” He chuckled at her ferocious glare as he tilted forward, flying closer to the mountains as they slowly descended further down.

“It’s not funny!” Sakura barked, her patience wearing ever thin. “This is taking way too long, and Ivy and Zero are still stuck at Maggie’s, and you’re screwing around making everything harder than it needs to be!”

“I’m helping,” he shot back, not really believing it.

“Well, help harder! We gotta get this over with and go get them!”

The man groaned and rolled his head along his shoulders in annoyance. “You treat those two like spoiled children. Just stop. They’ll be fine. They’re never going to learn how to handle their own problems if you keep coddling them like this. Life is all about challenges and overcoming adversity and a bunch of other stupid shit that they’re never going to have the opportunity to fail at cause you keep getting in the way.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed, and her teeth clenched, her anger growing. “I coddle them? What have you been doing this whole time? Zero didn’t even know what a prostitute was. Or anything for that matter!”

“And he didn’t ever need to know about them!” Ren snapped back. “That boy was doing just fine not knowing what a prostitute was, and it’s not like he was ever gonna get one anyways! I’m not paying for that shit! Are you crazy?!” He glanced away from the woman and at the mountain, his eyes brightening. “Oh! There’s one. You were right. They were further down. Good call.”

The demon’s head snapped back to the ground below spotting a long, dark, shimmering line pushing its way through the snow slowly.

Of course, when she stopped looking, it would show up.

Now, she just had to not kill it.

What a hassle.

It wasn’t the first snow dweller Sakura had dealt with, but it was the first she wasn’t allowed to exterminate. Her and Ren used to do this very thing when they were younger; fly up into the mountains to see what they could spot for the fox to kill. They’d make bets on how many she could get before they had to rush home before Raz got back to discover them gone.

Snow dwellers were huge but easy to terminate. Too easy. As long as you stabbed through the top of their head they would melt like ice in the sun. And she was expected to retrieve its third eye, which, was naturally, on top of its head.

“You ready for this?” the angel asked.

“Yeah,” she mustered, unable to sound too confident.

He stared at her, waiting. “You gonna get a dagger ready?”

She had already thought of that, but the man was right, she never could pull her swings, and with a dagger it was certain she’d push past the eye socket and kill it. “No, I don’t want to risk it. I’m just gonna use my hands.”

“Really?!” his voice perky. “That’s gonna be fun. You ready?”

Not really. “Yeah. Go for it.”

Ren flew ahead of the pest’s trajectory before releasing the woman, watching her plummet towards the mountain, her body hitting and disappearing into the deep snow. He waited, his feet tapping in rhythm to the beating of his wings.

She would either fail.

Or have one hell of a ride.

The serpent like creature burst into the sky, its mouth emitting a low pitch sizzle sound, its head trying to shake the woman whose hands had buried deep into its eye socket. It crashed back into the snow, thrashing as it tried to throw the woman, her body being whipped around by the erratic movements.

Sakura had managed to drive her hands around the cantaloupe sized eye but still needed to push them further in to sever the optical nerve. However, in order to do that she would need the ability to actually force her hands towards it, and that was not going to happen while she was being flung around like a rag doll, barely managing to keep hold of the eye.

She should have dug her hands harder into the socket at that first initial push upon landing, but she had second guessed herself, overly cognizant of the chances of accidentally exterminating the pest. And look where it had led her. Out of viable options other than one.

He was never going to let her live it down.

“Ren!” the woman screamed, her body twisting and bucking atop the snow dweller’s head before a larger form pressed down on hers, keeping her in place.

“What’s taking so long?” the angel taunted as he pierced the sides of the pest’s head with the dagger and hunting knife, avoiding the brain, stabilizing them temporarily. “Doesn’t mama hen have baby chicks to rescue? Better hurry before they’re mildly inconvenienced.”

It was all the demon needed as her sharp nails reached for and sliced the cord, pulling the eye free. “Got it!”

He pulled the blades, his arms circling her waist as ebony wings launched them away from the creature. They floated above, watching the pest burrow and disappear back into the safety of the snow, now bearing one less eye.

Sakura held the yellowish eye with sharp, dark blue pupil in front of them. “I did it!” she cheered, admiring her prize. “All by myself. With no help from anyone. I told you I could do it.”

“Yeah, you did,” Ren agreed as they suddenly jerked sideways. “Oh shit! Don’t drop it!”

“Damn it, Ren!” She clutched the eye protectively to her chest. “Stop it!”

He chuckled, turning to head down the mountain. “I’m not doing anything. It’s the wind up here. It’s choppy as hell.”

The demon considered arguing but realized she was in the worst position to do so. Silence seemed like the safest option, least the angel decided to drop her the next time.

The man had actually managed to remember where they left their things, and as he landed, the woman was rushing to the jar the moment her toes brushed the ground. She unscrewed the cap and stuffed it inside, the liquid overflowing. The cap went back on, and she left it on the ground to retrieve her glaive. “Let’s fly this time. It’ll be quicker.”

Ren looked at her with amused disbelief. “Fly? We’re not flying. I already told you we’re gonna walk back. I made a promise to you. I’m not going back on it.”

The woman bit her cheek.

This man.

Always making things harder than they needed to be.

She would need to play into his interests in order to meet her own.

“If we fly, you can carry me,” she pointed out. “Hold me close. Touch me. You like doing all that.”

He snorted, unimpressed with the offer. “Maybe, but I just spent most of the day holding you and carrying your ass around. Now I’m interested in watching it.”

The woman huffed at the brazen declaration. “You know, you don’t have to verbalize every thought.”

“I know I don’t have to, but I want to. And I want to walk back to Maggie’s, so that’s what we’re going to do.”

There was no way she was walking all the way back, wasting more of the day, when flying would get them there in a fraction of the time.

Sakura turned and closed the short distance between them, her arms reaching and slithering around the man’s shoulders as she gazed pitifully at him. “Please Ren,” she pleaded softly. “I got the eye, and I didn’t even kill it. Aren’t you impressed?”

The man would give that much to her. “I actually kind of am,” he admitted. It had never happened before, and it was unlikely to ever happen again. How she had managed it at all was beyond him.

“So, carry me. As a reward.”

His brow raised; hands found her waist. “And what do I get? Where’s my reward?”

She knew she had him now. “You get to carry me,” she repeated, the answer obvious.

“We’ve already established that I’ve done that, and I don’t want to do it again.”

“Is that right?” Her legs popped up, locking around his hips as his hands instinctively griped under her thighs to support her. “Even if you carry me like this while I whisper sweet, little lies in your ear about how pretty you are?” Her head tilted with a knavish curve of her lips. “What could be better than that?”

He gave it a moment’s consideration. “I can think of something.”

Delicate hands caressed the man’s face as her smile grew more alluring. Deceptive. “Well, the chances of that something better ever happening are dwindling the longer we stand here, so you better be quick if you ever want that to be an option.”

Ren narrowed his eyes at the woman, not enjoying the sudden turn of events. “Now that’s just mean.”

The demon shrugged. “Well, maybe if you’d been nicer today, then nicer things would have happened for you.”

The angel couldn’t argue with that. He was well aware just how much he had drawn out the task for his own amusement, and so was she. He grumbled but went to the jar, picking it up. “You know, you are the most infuriating person I have ever known. You better hope I don’t accidentally drop you in a tree again.”

Sakura laughed as they took to the air, knowing that she had won the battle. “Go ahead, but remember, taking the easy way out won’t make the boy a man.”