Author's Note:

This is my first Akuma no Riddle fanfic. Ever since I watched this show I've been wanting to write something cute and slightly angsty exploring Haru and Tokaku's relationship and what might have happened after Episode 12.

Scars

Azuma Tokaku is a failed assassin and she will be forever grateful for that fact. She knows now it is a path that would have consumed her as easily and completely as it did the rest of her family; she knows also it is a path she never would have questioned, never would have escaped from, if not for the pale skinned girl who lies sleeping beside her.

In the silver glimmer of moonlight stealing into the room, Tokaku studies her saviour, eyes wandering over bare skin that is normally hidden from her sight. Haru is sleeping on her back with her arms thrown out, looking sweetly innocent somehow, the sheet mostly pulled from her body by the action of Tokaku sitting up and gathering it about her own waist.

Tokaku knows Haru is self-conscious about her scars. When she is awake, she hides them, even from Tokaku, slipping seamlessly from bath towel to robe to clothes when she comes out of the shower, always changing into outfits that fully conceal.

Even during the times when Tokaku slides her fingers over Haru's naked skin, feeling the dips and ridges of her scars with the concern of a lover's caress, Haru sometimes pulls her hands away and places them elsewhere on her body, on the few unscarred places she has left.

It isn't fair of her to expect Tokaku not to take an interest in those scars; after all scars are one of the few areas of expertise that Tokaku has. Gliding her eyes over the battlefield of Haru's body that so many have tried and failed to conquer, Tokaku automatically notes details about the scars criss-crossing her skin; sorting the shallow from the severe, cataloguing the weapons responsible – knife, gun, sword, scissors, guessing healing time from least to longest. Tokaku knows all about the logistics of pain.

She wants to ask questions and learn the stories behind each and every one of those scars, but she doesn't because she knows Haru won't answer. Sometimes when Haru sleeps she shakes and cries out with the dreams tormenting her, and on those nights Tokaku holds her close, slitted eyes darting about the room searching for enemies she knows aren't there because they're in Haru's mind where Tokaku can't fight them.

When Tokaku asks the next morning what Haru was dreaming of, Haru only smiles her bright smile and says she doesn't remember. And then she will look outside their window, her face alight with happiness, and make some comment about how beautiful the day is, even if it's pouring with rain. After that, Tokaku can't bring herself to ask anymore, because she doesn't want to make Haru think of all the dark things in her life and see her joy fade.

And so, because of that, Tokaku still doesn't know how Haru got most of her scars, and maybe never will.

There is one scar Tokaku studies more closely than all the rest. She is unerringly drawn to it, both fascinated and repulsed, the newest and most recent addition to Haru's collection. A scar not faded like the others, still red and angry some days, still barely healed.

The scar that rests right over her heart.

The scar that Tokaku gave her.

Looking at it makes Tokaku half unknowingly stroke her own scar on the left palm of her hand, for it shares a common origin with Haru's scar.

Tokaku never doubted she could stop Haru's thrust. It just made it all too easy for her to justify her own desire to kill. The bite of the knife in her palm, her fingers embracing the cold steel of the blade and every burden that came with that.

The burden of success. The burden of knowing her own knife had not gone astray. The burden of living, knowing she had killed the one she loved.

Blood flowing between their bodies; the trickle from Tokaku's hand and the red tide from Haru's heart. The heart she had sworn to protect. The heart that was more precious to Tokaku than her own. The heart she had broken with the too-quick blade of her knife.

It had been Tokaku's first kill, her first real victory, the blooding that would truly earn her the fear that came with her name.

It had been ashes in her mouth and bitter tears and the desolation of the ending of her world.

But Haru's heart had been stronger than even Tokaku could have imagined. She had sworn right from the beginning she was going to live, and even an Azuma assassin couldn't stop her. She'd graduated the victor of Class Black and been granted her wish for a normal life. She was the only one of them who'd succeeded, despite Tokaku's conviction she'd fall at the first attempt made on her life.

Tokaku covers Haru's scar with her own and feels her heart beating, slow and steady in the night. Haru's heart is a mystery she still doesn't understand, a constant revelation of kindness and forgiveness that clashes with everything Tokaku had once known the word family to mean.

After learning Haru survived, Tokaku had gone to see her at the hospital fully expecting to be hated and intending nonetheless to beg for that which she no longer had a right to. Yet instead of the cold rejection she'd anticipated, Tokaku had been met with a kiss, their first real kiss, shared in the harshness of the hospital's fluorescent lights. Haru had pulled her down into it, cutting off Tokaku's stumbling apology, her lips dry and warm against Tokaku's own.

"Tokaku-san," she whispered. "I love you."

Tokaku hadn't found the courage to say it back to her until weeks later, when Haru was out of hospital, on a night neither of them were likely to forget.

Hesitating over the strangeness of those words on her lips, Tokaku had realised then it was the first time she'd ever said I love you to anyone at all, and having the freedom to say it; having someone to say it to, changed her whole life in that moment.

She still hasn't said it more than a handful of times since, but maybe soon she will have said it enough that she'll lose track of the exact number of times. She's kind of looking forward to that day.

Haru stirs, heart fluttering beneath Tokaku's touch.

"Tokaku," she says sleepily, not quite awake. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing," Tokaku whispers, sliding back down beside her and returning half the stolen sheet.

Muttering, Haru shifts onto her side, pulling the sheet over her shoulder and giving Tokaku a brief sight of her back.

After lying still for a few moments, Tokaku inches closer and wraps her arm over Haru's waist, fingers searching until they rest lightly against the scar again, tracing its difficult geography beneath the shelter of the sheet shared between them.

Haru doesn't move away.