When he portals to Mizu's cabin by himself, he always makes sure the portal in Wintermute opens outside her cabin. He doesn't do it as unnecessary courtesy, of course. She's given Vergil leave more or less to come and go as he pleases. So, even if he were to portal in and find the cabin empty, he would be permitted to stay until she returned without any sort of issue. Likewise, even if she were in the middle of something, there is nothing that he could possibly interrupt that she would wish to hide from him. His reasoning is that even with as safe as Folkmore relatively is when compared the dangers she faces back home, he knows Mizu avoids becoming lax. A sudden intrusion, even a welcomed one, would still likely put Mizu unnecessarily on edge even for just a moment. So, at least by portaling outside the cabin, she has the opportunity to recognize the sounds as him rather than needing to react to something so suddenly close and in her space.
At least then if she means to greet him with a sharp blade, that's by her choice then rather than instinct.
Tonight, however, he would prefer that's not how she chooses to greet him when he appears outside her cabin. It's not particularly late into the evening, but one would not be able to tell this time of year in Wintermute. Although not as bothered by the cold as he would be were he not half-demon, Vergil still isn't keen on remaining outside for long once the portal behind him closes. He crosses the short distance to her front door, and lets himself into the warm cabin.
"Mizu," he calls to her as he steps inside, just in case she was upstairs and did not hear the noise outside well enough. Vergil sets down both the bag he was carrying and Yamato so that he can shrug off his coat, hanging it up in the entryway. He also takes the time to toe off his boots. They didn't accumulate much snow, but he'd still rather not drag it around through her home. As he takes them off, he says, "I hope you didn't have any particular plans for tonight."
Frankly, Vergil doesn't anticipate that she does. It's New Year's Eve, but she's not exactly the sort to want to go out and socialize at a party. Which is why he didn't bother telling her in advance that he planned on making toshikoshi soba with her, and wanted it to be more of a surprise. It seemed the better choice than presenting her with a Christmas present. Not that Vergil thinks she would have opposed a gift at Christmas, but... Well, Vergil knows well enough from their conversations that it would certainly be a little more complicated than either of them would likely prefer. This, however, was something she hopefully had some experience with if his research was at all correct. Or even if she did not have direct experience, she would have at least perhaps heard of it.
He picks up the bag of ingredients and leaves Yamato by the doorway, stepping out of her entry way and more properly in the cabin.
"I also hope you haven't..." Vergil trails off as he catches sight of her, stopping almost mid-step as he does. His head tilts as the beginnings of a smile tugs at one corner of his lips as he looks her up and down. "Mizu... Is that my shirt?"
It's not exactly as though Vergil and Mizu have overlapping tastes and preferences in their clothes, so he knows it is, and she knows it is. He just probably wasn't meant to see her in it.
Mizu trained for hours and worked for hours more in the forge from early in the day. Although there is some chance that Luan Street might have some activities she's used to, the coming of the new year, even one by the Western calendar, along with the passage of more than a year in Folkmore reminds her of how long it has been since she saw swordfather, Ringo, and anyone else. They may not miss her. Should the fox spirit keep its promise, they have not missed her a single moment, yet she has been without them for a prolonged period of time. She went as far as a shrine in Wintermute (they're less common here, but she's lived here nearly the entirety of her sojourn in Folkmore) and lit some incense in thoughts of them. That final trek through the snow in the dark meant she was soaked upon her return. Mizu bathed, and when it came time to dress again, well, she has no plans to leave her cabin for the night and no reason to suspect anyone will visit her.
So she ends up on the sofa reading about winter traditions in London in Vergil's shirt. It still smells of him, though the scent grows faint given how many nights she's worn it since he last did. He will likely spend the night soon, based off how their pattern has settled, and Mizu will get a new shirt to wear in the evenings or nights that he is not. So far as routines go, theirs is a good one, and now that she visits him, sometimes her clothes smell a little of him when she comes home.
The sound of someone's arrival is a familiar one that means Vergil. Mizu smiles before looking down in alarm. She looks at the stairs, but the door opens and Mizu refuses to be caught fleeing upstairs in Vergil's shirt even more than she'd prefer not to be caught in it at all. Her cheeks redden when she catches sight of Vergil because that means he can see her and exactly what she's wearing.
Mizu closes the book and sets it aside on the nearby table. She crosses her arms, flushing further at the question, and looks just to the side of his face. "It was in my closet."
As though that's a particularly compelling argument.
Mizu tries her best to remain calm and unaffected from the way she closes and sets aside her book as though it were merely her reading that he interrupted. But it's obvious from the way red colors her cheeks and she crosses her arms, and especially in how she does not meet his gaze, that she is likely embarrassed. Vergil feels a pang of guilt, wondering if perhaps he should not have said anything at all. He only drew attention to it because he likes seeing her in his clothes, not out of admonishment or to poke fun at her. However, he dismisses the idea he shouldn't have said anything quickly. It's less a matter of whether or not he should have said something, and more that he needs to be certain he's clear in what he's saying.
Vergil steps further into her living room, setting his bag down on the coffee table for the moment and slides into the seat on the couch beside her. He presses a kiss to her warm, flushed cheek.
"I should hope so. Or else I have questions as to how you managed to smuggle my clothes out of my own house while I was with you nearly the entire time," he says, making light of her response, but not the fact she's wearing his shirt. He wraps an arm around behind her, resting his hand on her opposite hip without pulling her too him as a means of trying to offer her comfort and further affection. "It's a lovely surprise to see you in it. It looks good on you, and when I wear it next, your scent will be on it stronger than just sitting among your clothes in the closet.
"Although I should be angry with you." He presses a kiss to her temple. "I came here with a purpose in mind, and you've the audacity to drive me to distraction so quickly. How am I meant to concentrate with thoughts of you in only that shirt, hm? Just couldn't let me win this once, could you?"
Mizu doubts she could manage to smuggle Vergil's clothes out of his house, at least in the times she was there. He'd likely need to be cooking and provide Mizu at least a minute or so in his room. Even then, the odds are he'd hear what she was doing. With no excuse of dressing herself, the sounds would have little to excuse them. For all that, Mizu recognizes that the comment is lighthearted and not meant to be taken seriously. Undoubtedly, if Mizu managed as much, if she ever manages it, he would be impressed at her skills if nothing else.
His next words assure her that he seems to enjoy the same thing as she with his clothes. When they come to her cabin, they smell of him. At the end of the day, when Mizu knows he's not coming, she has formed the habit of wearing his shirts, one until it no longer smells of him. Then another. They rotate regularly enough that there's usually one for her to wear, and Mizu's taken care not to wear them when she thinks he's most likely to come. In the pattern of his comings and goings at her cabin, tonight isn't one she expected him. Amused, she asks, "You smell me on your shirts?"
Mizu leans into his touch when he mentions distractions, not of any mind to make it immediately easier. She rests her arm on his lap, hand gently caressing his knee. "If you are so readily distracted, perhaps you should give me a reason to let you go and return to your purpose."
He hums in light amusement as she asks him about her scent on his clothing.
"My senses are a little more enhanced than a human's, including my sense of smell," he says, but ultimately leaving it at that. Mizu is smart enough to fill in for herself on how her scent may linger just enough upon him that he can still smell it when it might escape the notice of others.
Mizu leans closer to him and places a hand on his knee, and he doesn't know why he is remotely surprised that she would play dirty like this. As she does in battle, Mizu only truly concerns herself with the outcome. The process in which she reaches that desired outcome need not follow established rules and conditions. All is fair.
"Because I have been soaking kombu for at least four hours to ensure the flavor is right for the broth," he says, his free hand taking hold of her chin. He tips her face up to provide him access to her neck, bending down close as though he intends to claim it with his kisses. He stops just short of touching her skin with his lips. Two can play at this game, as it were. "But if it goes any longer, it will need to go in the refrigerator overnight, and we will have to wait until tomorrow."
He pulls back a little, releasing her chin in favor of tracing the line of her neck instead.
"Which I suppose wouldn't be the greatest tragedy, but I believe toshikoshi soba is meant to be eaten tonight, not tomorrow," he says as his fingertips work their way back up until he can caress her face.
Mizu hasn't considered what Vergil's plans might be, and she doesn't expect him to mention seaweed in the requested reason she should go along with them. He tilts her face, and the actions are so at odds with the words, it's easier to go along with the part that makes sense. Her eyes half-close as he leans in toward her neck, and Mizu expects him to kiss her or bite at her neck and leave a mark or something. Instead, he talks even more about the seaweed and how it needs to be treated.
It jars her out of the moment.
She blinks, but the fingers along her skin are more than enough to confirm her situation. Vergil has always cooked more than her, and though she's not used to thinking of him making familiar Japanese food, he's by far the better of them in the kitchen. By the time she's caught up personally with the moment, he's discussing toshikoshi soba, and Mizu blanches at their mention. After so long in Folkmore, the reminder of Ringo shouldn't hurt as much as it does, but she has forced thoughts of him from her mind again and again until she can go days, even weeks, without thinking of him once. So sharply having soba, the food that made their paths cross and of which Ringo was personally so proud, thrown in her face— Vergil may as well have impaled her with Yamato. It would hurt less.
She closes her eyes, foolish tears escaping regardless, and Mizu forcibly relaxes the fingers she hadn't realized were digging into Vergil's leg. Doing her best to block out everything, even Vergil, for a couple moments, Mizu focuses on her breathing. She gets it back under control: long steady breath in and an even longer exhale. It's the same practice by which she clears her mind to make steel and swords put to different use.
In a few moments, Mizu's calmer. Even without the aid of something cold to shock her system, she can breath. Her breathing remains shallower than normal but deep enough not to hyperventilate. Vergil has soba noodles in his grocery bags mere feet away from her. This fact, though shocking, doesn't send her into a panic. That's good. Her heart aches, and Mizu knows it isn't merely the product of how long she's been in Folkmore but the way she and Ringo parted ways. He wouldn't work with her save by an agreement to save Akemi, what she refused to do in the village that day. They aren't what they were. They never were. Mizu was never who Ringo thought she was. The distance is more than a world away.
"That's," Mizu manages, as though she didn't panic in response, "right."
She swallows and fights the urge to make a joke that Vergil wouldn't want her New Year's Eve soba. It doesn't take swordfather to recognize such a strong negative reaction to a thoughtful, actually, plan to celebrate the holiday. Mizu takes a deeper breath with only a few hitches in it. "That's, thank you. I understand."
Even with Lore, it isn't something done entirely on a whim. Vergil's already invested hours in it before Mizu even knew. It's more impressive given he could make it go faster by using Lore to skip any of the steps. He hasn't. He doesn't. That's not how Vergil does things. Yet Ringo's voice rings in her ear, the bell too as he gives it back to her, every harsh word and snub. It stings.
Mizu looks at Vergil, somewhat resigned that something will get talked about. As little as she wants to discuss Ringo, she also will not lie to Vergil.
He didn't have some grand delusion that Mizu would be beside herself in enthusiasm and anticipation about this surprise. While she may appreciate the gesture, he could not foresee her exuberantly praising him. They are just noodles at the end of the day, and he knows the end of the year in this place does not follow a calendar that she's more familiar with from her era. In fact, the latter as well as the possibility that she has no connection in the end were reasons enough to prepare himself for the surprise to fall flat in the worst case scenario. Unfortunately, it appears that was not the worst case scenario after all. So much of the wind in his sails is taken away at the sudden welling and shedding of tears, and his hand stills entirely along her neck at the shock of it. As Mizu calms herself, Vergil sits silently. His hand falls away from her skin as he tries to process what just happened, but his other arm remains around her. Beyond turning slightly so he is not staring at her as she breathes, Vergil otherwise remains frozen. It's only once she speaks again that Vergil turns his gaze back to her. He's never heard her speak like that before. Clipped as though the words leave her without any thoughts put into them that they nearly make no sense whatsoever.
Terrible does not really begin to reflect how he feels right now. He's cut her to the quick, and in retrospect it feels so obvious. Mizu has spent so much of her life excluded from things, even simple ones like sharing a bowl of noodles to mark the end of a year. Even if she was aware of the tradition as he'd hoped she would be, who in her life would have invited her to partake in it? Master Eiji was the closest possibility and even that was no guarantee. No, it was most likely she was never included or worse.
So, he realizes now at the worst possible time that he should have asked. But he had been too damned focused and wrapped up in wanting it to be a gift to her because he hasn't yet since they've known one another or become more than just friends. And because Vergil assumed she would be pleased by not being roped into a Christmas celebration, for him to have taken the time to find something familiar to her. But he should have asked. He knows better than that. It was selfish and stupid of him not to think of this exact scenario as a possibility. He knows better than to be so thoughtless like this.
He shakes his head a little.
"No..." he says faintly, his arm around her moving so that he can rub gentle circles at the center of her back. "We, um—..."
Vergil clears his throat to speak more firmly.
"Forget it. I shouldn't have— I wasn't thinking, Mizu. I'm sorry." He presses a kiss to her hairline and returns to holding her close with an arm. "We can spend the night together like we usually do instead. I wanted to be here with you tonight regardless of what we do since it's been a while since we last saw one another. It's okay."
Vergil does not know explicitly why she's reacted the way she has, but he does not ask. As far as he's concerned, he's done enough damage. Prying into something like that, something that could put such hurt in her eyes that some part of her fire appears to dim, and leads her to look at him like she must steel herself further for the terrible inevitably of unearthing whatever wound this happens to be is bound to make it worse.
"Let me put away what needs to be refrigerated for the night. Everything else can stay in the bags, and I can bring it all home with me in the morning. It won't go to any sort of waste with Dante and Nero. We can have a quiet evening together after that."
Mizu reaches her arm around Vergil and holds him tight as soon as he speaks of standing up. In that moment, it feels like leaving, something intolerable when everyone's left her before. A small part of her mind knows that's not true. They've spoken enough of swordfather that she knows it isn't true. It doesn't matter then. It feels like Vergil standing and pulling away from her would be like the gulf that lies between her and Ringo, a vast loneliness she doesn't know how to banish. Rin's friendship, Vergil's constancy in her life, none of that ameliorates the pain of Ringo's absence, not only his physical absence but his rejection and disapproval. Clutching Vergil doesn't change it either, but the alternative is unthinkable.
She goes so far as to pull herself into Vergil's lap, her legs straddling his waist. Her hand keeps a painfully tight grip on his shoulder, and Mizu swallows because she understands her actions and doesn't at the same time. Vergil has never abandoned her, and he's never left her when she's vulnerable and in pain. She trusts him to stay with her, to return when he leaves, and that so long as their relationship does not interfere with his relationships with Nero and Dante he will be steady in it. The better his relationships get with them, the more stable, the more secure their relationship feels. So Mizu understands that Vergil getting up to put the food away would not be leaving her. He already said repeatedly that he wants to be here tonight. Mizu knows all that.
Yet Vergil standing and leaving even so much as to cross the room toward the kitchen she can see entirely from the couch is too much.
"Stay," Mizu says. It's not a command so much as a request, one that feels all too desperate in the moment. More softly, "Stay."
She feels terrible and needy and small. Like Ringo leaving wasn't just a year ago but an echo of an empty shack on fire and a woman, a mother, not dead but gone. It all happened in an instant, those memories, and this fierce mood that threatens to crack her open. None of it is Vergil's fault. Of everything they've discussed, she's left Ringo out of it. Ringo and his noodles. His noodles, his medicines, his rice balls, everything. A typhoon she called him, and he is, even in his absence. Especially in his absence.
Mizu frowns, his words of apology confusing. As understandable as it is that Vergil would be sorry for hurting her, even unintentionally, he seems to think he should have known better. "You didn't, you don't, have a way to know. It's not your fault. It's mine. What happened was my fault, and I didn't tell you. Don't blame yourself."
That seems important, even among everything else, that Vergil doesn't blame himself for something he had no way of knowing about.
The way Mizu practically scrambles into his lap is a strong enough signal to Vergil that she wants him to stay that she really doesn't need to say it aloud as well. Stepping away for a moment to manage the food was just an opportunity for him to catch his breath, his pulse subtly racing in the wake of his wrongdoing. But with her on top of him, clinging to him, asking him in every manner possible not to go anywhere from this spot on the couch, she feels so unlike her as he knows her to be. She feels...fragile. Delicate in a way that feels less precious and more terrifying than anything. The arm he has around her already holds her by the waist all the tighter and more firmly while his other arm wraps around her, drawing her nearer to rest more of her weight on him.
He disbelieves her when Mizu suggests he ought to be blameless. She's right in that she did not tell him and her implication that his actions did not bear malice or ill will towards her for that fact alone. But Mizu has told him enough of other incidents, of her life in general, that this was not as safe an assumption as he treated it. And she has been hurt because he was not vigilant enough and not nearly as considerate as he led himself to believe he was being. Vergil says nothing to her absolution because he cannot accept it and debating the point seems like the wrong choice.
Well, realistically, everything feels a degree of wrong to him right now. But things by his own choice especially lend themselves in that direction right now. Vergil does not trust his judgment in navigating this uncertain and new territory with her. So, he relents to her request to stay. He trusts her judgment that remaining right where he is rather than stepping away from her for even a moment is for the best even as parts of him chafe because of it and want nothing more than to escape into the kitchen for just a moment. Just a moment.
"Alright," he says quietly, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt that she wears as he holds her just a little tighter. "I'll stay."
Over her shoulder, his eyes dart to the kitchen again. Vergil more permanently eliminates it as a possibility than even her on top of him like this. His clone manifests at his will to complete the task instead of disturbing her to do it himself. As it begins rifling through the bag for what needs to be put away, Vergil swings his legs up onto the couch and lies down on his side with Mizu, placing her tightly and firmly in the space between him and the back of the couch. He tangles their legs together as he kisses her face, peppering it with light kisses in a slow, intentional manner from the tip of her nose to her brow to her cheek to the corner of her lips. With her wearing his shirt, he's able to slip a hand beneath its hem to lightly trace along the warm skin of her side from her waist to the bandages she binds with.
He does not know if she needs more than this. Frankly, he's uncertain she needs this much when he's already said he would stay. But Vergil tries to do as she's asked of him to remain close, following it with other ways they tend to be close with one another to assure her she needs not try to convince him or that he would choose anything over her request right now. Anxiously, he hopes he hasn't misunderstood though, and that this gentle intimacy is able to make her feel better, not worse.
As foolish and unreasonable as it may be, Vergil stays. Mizu notices when his clone materializes and appreciates it not being the fox spirit's interference or anyone else deciding to arrive at her cabin. She could release Vergil and fight someone were it necessary, but it's far better that it's not. That confirmed, she doesn't look at what it's doing. That is stupid when it's only food and that prepared with care and affection. It is a moment for stupidity it seems, and swordfather isn't there to bonk her on the head and say something that settles her thoughts. Yet Mizu doubts there's anything he could say this time.
Vergil doesn't say anything either, but he holds her tight. The world shrinks from her cabin to the couch. She feels his trousers against her bare legs, his hand against her side, and his kisses against her face. They're small things, but each spot he kisses cools when he leaves it. That coolness brings her back a little more to her own awareness. It cuts through the sense of imminent loss and abandonment to leave embarrassment in its wake. Here she is unable to appreciate a nice gesture, Vergil celebrating the new year per her traditions.
Mizu focuses on her breathing, even as she's bewildered she reacted that way. Oh, she understands it's about Ringo, but that it showed so clearly outside her own mind is mortifying. As emotive as she is, as much as she shows her emotions unless she needs to guard them (and in Folkmore, she rarely needs to), it goes beyond that. It's something to consider, but it's not most urgent.
Although Vergil doesn't ask about her reaction, Mizu feels like he deserves to know. She hates the thought of talking about Ringo. Most of the time she manages not to think about it, about him. She also hates the idea of saying nothing and Vergil stewing in confusion and self-blame. Silence, after all, is not the same as agreement or acceptance. Mizu's done that far too many times to think otherwise. Repeating herself that it's not his fault is pointless. Only an explanation can make sense of it.
Mizu lets herself breathe him in. Naturally he smells even stronger of himself than his shirt did, and if she's honest, she didn't want to ask him to do something for the holiday in case he had plans with his family but did miss him and want his company. That's one reason she's wearing his shirt. She didn't imagine it going like this. So it takes her a little time to do anything else when Vergil's holding her and close and part of her just wants to stay like that.
"Has anyone thought you were great, only for them to get disappointed when you proved only to be a flawed person?" Mizu asks, by means of introduction to the topic of Ringo. Not that she's ever claimed to be great or cared about greatness for greatness's sake. She's a good swordsman because it's necessary for her revenge, not to right every wrong in the world, not to right any wrong. Ringo is the one who built his image of her, no matter what she said. She didn't convince him of it, and it still hurt when he realized it, when she'd grown used to having him around.
This close to one another and his hand along her side, he can physically feel the moment Mizu's breaths begin to lengthen properly again. No longer is it that shallow breathing that stole her ability to speak smoothly or in a manner that felt coherent. But Vergil makes no request for her to speak or implicit demand for an explanation. If all she wished to do was lie here in silence until she fell asleep, that is what he was prepared and willing to do. Even if he's never seen her react such a way to anything before, Vergil is aware through his own experience just how raw and uncomfortable one feels afterward. Talking about it is usually the last thing on his mind.
She speaks eventually though, and asks him a question. Vergil's brow furrows slightly in his confusion as he shakes his head. "No."
Mizu makes a half-nod. It would be easier if Vergil had experienced that, but his answer does not surprise her. Their lives have been different, and Mizu would be shocked if Vergil had a Ringo of his own. Someone so there and supportive of him, if only for a short time. Surely it would have come up. Surely it should have, for her.
"I tracked down Fowler via his business partner. I got his business partner's name from a flesh trader with a flashy, European gun. I stepped in when he attacked the cook at a noodle house, cut his gun to pieces, cut off some of his fingers too, and left once I had the information I needed," Mizu shrugs. A simple matter that is nothing out of the ordinary in her hunt for her fathers.
"The cook followed me. I tried to dissuade him every way I could: with words, by tying him to a tree, through hiring prostitutes, by threatening his life... He kept following me. I needed his help to get through a checkpoint, and no matter how much I told him the dark path I was on, he wouldn't listen.
"He thought I was great." Mizu's deadpan with that line. She doesn't believe it, not the way Ringo meant.
"We went through a lot together." Mizu would likely have died without Ringo's help. Repeatedly. It's uncomfortable to think about that, when she did so much to prevent him from being there in the first place, when he wouldn't have been there at all if he'd truly understood her.
"Akemi's father's men came for her outside Madam Kaji's. I let them take her, and Ringo saw who I was. We parted ways." Her affect is flat, though there's still pain behind it. Ringo left. Everyone leaves, but he hurt more than most. He thought more of her than most. There's so much behind Akemi too, a complex relationship there, but Mizu doesn't have the energy to explain everything in one go. Akemi isn't the point. She was only the catalyst for Ringo to realize what kind of person Mizu is. It could have been anyone.
Vergil listens to her story attentively, his hand still idly stroking and tracing the warm skin of her side. He does not respond right away, not with words because while it's simple and straightforward as far as stories go, there is still a lot to take in.
Vergil does not believe Mizu is really the one to bear responsibility for how Ringo reacted. For someone to witness such a display of violence upon meeting someone as the one Mizu describes, as Vergil knows her to be capable of doing, there is a certain willful ignorance that goes into deluding oneself into believing there is nothing Mizu would not do in the name of her revenge. Especially when no doubt there were other repeated incidents after that which Mizu glazed over in favor of reaching the conclusion.
Rather than speaking right away, Vergil sighs, his hand at her side dipping to the small of her back before nudging her closer in order to hold her tighter. She does not need to speak of the pain in losing Ringo for Vergil to know it's there. Even without that sudden panic and tears at the prospect of soba, the way Mizu keeps her tone so even and flat is telling. But there is also the preamble that makes it clear how much it must have wounded her. Even if Ringo's assumptions were false, he was the first person to have likely held her in such high regard, to have persisted even when she pushed him away as hard as she possibly could. Vergil does not know what it is to lose someone like that as not even Dante makes a close enough comparison for him to feel he can truly empathize with her. But what else could it have felt beyond devastating to have him reject her so much that he left? To find that there was a limit to such fierce companionship that perhaps she began to believe was truer than anything else she'd experienced in her life up to that point?
But then that also brings it back to the other parts of this to unpack. Vergil knows how Mizu is perceived and what her world has told her she is regardless of any evidence to the contrary. It's not unsurprising to hear her speak of it as though she tried to convince Ringo what a devil she is because that is no doubt exactly what she did and how she felt. How she probably still feels even now.
So Ringo is a wound, but not just any wound. Master Eiji had expressed his frustration and anger with her when she left. And Mikio and her surrogate mother were both too selfish to love her as she ought to be loved. But this was different. He is the first that her revenge truly cost her all while reopening the primal wounds that came coupled with the origin of her birth. She lost a companion, someone loyal to her and seemed to believe there was good within her, only to have it reaffirmed for her that there is nothing like that within her. It really is no wonder she reacted the way she did.
Rather than try to parse through everything told and implied, Vergil asks an important question, "Have you seen him since?"
Though Mizu holds nothing particular in her mind for what reaction Vergil might give, save that he supports her (he already is), his question is unexpected. It's not one that makes sense to her as the first question to ask in all that she's laid out. Life works in tangled ways, and paths cross. She knows that, but that doesn't explain it, not in its entirety. Mizu didn't know Taigen was in Fowler's castle, so Ringo didn't either. Taigen is not the reason Ringo approached the ice and icy water near it and somehow managed to pull them both out. They both would have died if he didn't pull them out. Mizu remembers grabbing for the ice, only for it to break away before she could climb out of the water. Then, nothing. It is not so much that Mizu remembers Ringo pulling her from the water so much as she knows it had to be him. He brought them to Kohama, to swordfather. No one else would have come onto the ice.
Mizu frowns and suspects Vergil will make some point regarding that, but it was not some joyous reunion. Ringo rejected her and refused to speak with her under almost any circumstances. He made his feelings clear every day they were there, so that Mizu could not go a moment in the same place without knowing how he felt. No gap has been bridged between them.
"Yes," Mizu says. "Taigen and I were nearly dead after facing Fowler the first time. He brought us to swordfather's. There he snubbed me and made clear I was no one to him. I struck a bargain with him to come with me to Edo. In return for him aiding me, I would find and help free Akemi."
She pauses. "We only talked business on the way to Edo. It was not like before."
Mizu leans into Vergil and his warm presence. She takes comfort in that even as she waits for him to strike with his words, to try to make the parting with Ringo somehow less than it actually is. No doubt there will be sound logic to them, but no logic can undercut the truth, the false bond now broken. Ringo did not even follow their plan and man his post. He followed Taigen into the shogun's palace. He does not listen to her or value her opinion, only her skills with violence put to his use. To Akemi's. She does not even know if he will be at the place they agreed to meet, when she goes back and kills Fowler. Not when he hasn't followed anything else she's said. Why would he, when he thinks so little of her?
He listens to the answer to his question with perhaps a more open mind than he's listened to other answers to similar questions, particularly as it pertains to Master Eiji. With Master Eiji, it was a different matter both in terms of Vergil's perspective and in the nature of the relationship to begin with. The trial allowed Vergil to experience a portion of Mizu's relationship with Master Eiji firsthand, and not through her word alone. Although Vergil is woefully ill-equipped when it comes to most relationships, he was at least able to recognize the bond he felt towards Master Eiji as one he once held himself as a boy, and to some extent still carries even now. But Ringo is not one that Vergil has any experience with both in the hypothetical and in the more concrete sense that the trials can sometimes offer. Making assumptions feels like far more dangerous territory as it pertains to Ringo than it did for Master Eiji.
"No one to him is likely a stretch," he says, although not for the reasons Mizu may assume. Vergil does not continue with an assertion that Ringo must deeply care for Mizu still. Instead, he says, "Snubbing you requires effort on his part. It was an unkind thing to do from an otherwise soft man from what you've implied of his character."
There's no negative judgment passed when he describes Ringo as soft. Not overtly, in any case, as it was when Vergil spoke of Mikio. What he views as weaknesses in Ringo, Vergil would sooner believe stem from a certain naivete. It's still not something he approves of, but it's not comparable to the sort of man Mikio was in his weakness and insecurities.
"I don't pretend to know his thoughts, but I would hazard to guess if he thought of you as no one, he would treat you with the sort of banal civility and kindness he would anyone else. It seems to me he had not yet resolved his anger and disappointment over your decision when your paths crossed again." It was most likely not an easy thing for him to do given how much he clearly built Mizu up to be someone else in his mind. There was a lot to reconcile there as far as that was concerned. But those feelings were most likely further complicated by the fact he played a part in saving Mizu's life on at least that occasion, too. Regardless of how he felt, there had to be a certain degree of relief that she made a recovery from her injuries even just out of a basic kindness for another person, never mind someone who he once forged a bond with through a great deal. "And if not his own behavior towards you, then at least by your reaction tonight, it seems to me that he would still hold such strong feelings towards you."
After all, if it managed to rattle Mizu, how could it not have had a similar or even greater effect on someone like Ringo?
So many people avert their gaze from Mizu, treat her rudely, and make sure she knows they think she is no one, sometimes merely for being of no social stature when her eyes are hidden, that the matter of snubbing taking effort hardly occurred to her. Her sole interaction with Ringo before he started following her around was to serve her noodles. Yes, he was polite, but he gave an oft repeated spiel he would give any customer at the noodle house. Yet on the road together, he was no pushover. He firmly told her to take her medicine. He poisoned Heiji Shindo's giant. He even refused an offer to work in Taigen's kitchens.
It's not exactly the reasoning Mizu expected of Vergil, but she cannot deny that Ringo was matter of fact but not rude when he rejected Taigen's offer. He pointedly ignored her so that she knew he ignored her. He offered Master Eiji the same ways he'd helped her and blatantly took on the role of apprentice. Master Eiji's general grumpy disposition about it had no effect on Ringo. Why would it? Mizu's didn't.
Perhaps that is why he saved her. He hadn't worked out his feelings, so he needed her alive until he accomplished that. Her death would tilt the scales, though Mizu could not say whether it would leave Ringo angry or sad, only that it would be more difficult for him to gain closure. She has no regrets about killing Mikio. He deserved it. Yet that final confrontation, that day, remained a wound. It remains one to a degree, though Vergil has made it easier to close chapters of her time with Mikio, to see and to understand flaws and problems she hadn't before, that took having someone who treats her better to truly see. Mikio treated her better than she ever expected, but that does not mean he treated her well. Ringo, soft Ringo, needs her alive to be mad at.
It's a form of caring to be loathed personally.
"That is not so different from Taigen," Mizu muses, "He's so determined to kill me in a duel to regain his honor that he fought by my side repeatedly to prevent anyone else from killing me. He even endured torture and didn't give me up, all while continuing to demand a duel to the death." She shakes her head. Honor is a dumb reason to die.
Ringo may never want Mizu dead. He isn't that much like Taigen, but it's possible for anger to motivate someone to provide aid, even to the one they are angry with. Fowler tempted her to do the same thing, to hate him but to keep him alive to be useful, to use her anger for his own survival. Mizu considered it, and had the fox spirit not brought her to Folkmore, she likely would accept for the simple reason she could kill Fowler after she killed Routley and Skeffington.
"It's been a year. It shouldn't have such an effect on me," Mizu says. She hasn't eaten soba the entire time she's been in Folkmore. She's avoided Ringo every way she can. So why, after a year apart and without thought, should she react so strongly? "It wasn't a surprise that he too would become disillusioned with me. It was only a matter of time. If it weren't Akemi, it would have been something else."
"Whether it should or shouldn't, it does." That much is abundantly clear to Vergil. And likely is to Mizu as well, or why else insist that it should be of little consequence to her, and Ringo should be like all the rest who have rejected her. Gently, Vergil suggests, "Perhaps it is not just Ringo who has not resolved his feelings over the matter."
Vergil does not refer to Mizu's decision with Akemi. It is unlikely that even with such hindsight that Mizu would choose differently than what has come to pass any more than Vergil would have chosen differently for himself in the absence of his son's existence. Neither of them are the sort of people to back down from their convictions, and they pursue them with the understanding there is to be a cost to them. Thus, they accept what comes to pass. Mizu lacks someone like Nero in her life to make her question or challenge her decisions, to come to bear the regrets that Vergil has from his time as V. So, of course, that's not where her complicated feelings arise. No, she is likely still wrestling with a loss for the first time ever. Where other instances she could fall back on feeling as though it were inevitable and beyond her control, this is far more confusing. Her actions are what led to Ringo remaining by her side even when by all logic, they should not have done so, but they are also what drove him away. Not her gender nor her race, but her actions.
"Grief is a terrible feeling." It was the whole reason Vergil refused his humanity for so long, after all. But this not the time for that conversation. He presses a kiss to the corner of her jaw. "But if you should feel anything after a loss like what you had with Ringo even with his mistaken belief in your path being different to what it is, it's grief. Even after all this time."
Perhaps especially after all this time when she has no doubt refused it in never speaking of him, but it's not an emotion Vergil's known to truly ever leave. It grows a little lighter, something one eventually becomes accustomed to, but it never leaves. Mizu has and certainly carries her own grief over others. That is not a foreign concept to her even if she generally disallows for much dwelling upon it. But this is different. This is not the grief she holds for a mother and husband who did not love her. This is not the grief she held onto even past reconciliation with swordfather. This is not the grief she holds for a father that she's transformed into a violent anger. This is something different and unknown. Something fresher than all of those wounds.
Mizu huffs a breath against Vergil's chest. It shouldn't matter this much. It should be resolved. It is over between them. Ringo is clear on his beliefs and how they differ from hers. The gap between them is a chasm neither will cross. Mizu will have her revenge, and Ringo will not support the actions necessary to achieve it. Never mind that her revenge will take her around the world, and whatever lingering sense of obligation to his own feelings he has will not push him to follow her out of Japan. Her revenge is not his concern, and while calling the boat a revenge boat may suggest that it (along with everything else) serves her revenge, he did not grasp that concept at a fundamental level. Her art is not swordsmanship. It's revenge.
"Now that he truly understands me and what I will do for my revenge, our differences are irreconcilable," Mizu says, "When I return home, I will kill Fowler, return to swordfather as I promised, and leave Japan. I may see Ringo again one last time, but he will stay in Japan, and I will go. If he hasn't settled his feelings by then, he can do so in my absence."
As for her own feelings, walking away to another world hasn't resolved them. Crossing an ocean or two will not either. Mizu may fare similarly to Folkmore, able to go for long periods of time without thinking of Ringo, but the same way Mikio haunted her when Fowler drugged her, thoughts of Ringo will return. As they returned tonight. It's aggravating. It's a grief that never should have come to be. Mizu knew from the start he didn't understand her. She knew he would leave once he did. She simply couldn't convince him of that until he witnessed something he could not condone. She knew it would happen, so why does it hurt so much?
It occurs to her that the same will happen to Vergil. It's a pain and loss they've both known will come since the first moment they became something. It's not something that could last, not truly. Under the best of circumstances, one of them will leave. Vergil to go home with Nero and Dante, or Mizu to seek her revenge. They will part ways, and it will hurt. Far worse, she suspects, than this, for she's let Vergil far closer. Mizu holds onto him tightly for the period she has him, for now. This terrible pain will feel like a minor scrape in comparison. The thought does not make the pain over Ringo feel any less. It refuses to scale down with the idea she kept so many things at a distance from Ringo. It refuses to care about any such logic. It hurts.
"I hate it," Mizu declares and wishes she could cut it out. Yet as much as it hurts, as bad as any injury she's sustained, she knows she cannot wish she never met Ringo. He saved her life. She grips Vergil's clothes under her hands tightly and cries into his shoulder. "It's not fair. I didn't ask for this. I told him not to think well of me. I'm not great."
It's almost something of a tantrum, except Mizu doesn't expect a response to it. It's what she's felt for so long, poisoning her thoughts and feelings, that it needs to come out like pus from a wound. None of those thoughts matter, save how tightly she's clung to them. She sobs harder. It isn't fair, but her life has never been fair. Not even the few good things that have happened in it. Mizu cries and hiccups a couple times. There's a name for what it is now, but it doesn't make the grief feel any less awful.
He passes no sort of judgment upon Mizu for how she reacts both in her words and her tears. Frustration and perhaps even a bit of anger and resentment over such an attachment, over someone placing and investing emotion into her after all that she did to try and ensure it would not come to pass, seems a natural response to him. Among the human emotions that Vergil still finds to be so deeply intolerable, grief is positioned as the most among its peers. He's spent his life avoiding such attachments as what Mizu has described in a desperate attempt to never feel such grief again. Even now Vergil would rather die than know such grief so intimately again. He's avoided giving voice to the grief that lodged itself within him upon Nero's acknowledgment of having been raised an orphan, speaking little of the deeper pangs of regret he feels at having missed so much of Nero's life and nothing of what he feels at so much as the mere intimation of Beatrice's likely fate.
So, he does not judge Mizu for her response now in both having shared and named what it is she feels. He merely holds her as she clings to him, dampening his shoulder with her sobs. At once it feels like not enough given that it can do nothing to change her feelings or even truly soothe them, and just what she needs by how tightly she burrows herself into his embrace and seeks out his comfort. For a few moments, Vergil lets her cry uninterrupted and without commentary from him, his hold upon her protective and firm.
"I know," he murmurs gently. "I know how much it hurts. I know."
He presses a kiss to her hair and rubs soothing circles upon her back.
"But no other hurt has been able to stop you, and neither will this one. You'll be okay."
Ringo came only recently into her life, less than a year before she came to Folkmore. He followed far worse pain—twice the loss of her mother and twice her rejection, the pained parting with swordfather, and the betrayal at Mikio's hands. All of it with hundreds of smaller pains along the way. Near starvation and being beaten up simply for what she is. All the times people have tried to kill her. The social slights. Pain and rejection are nothing new. They are her life.
Vergil is right. It will not stop her. Avoidance hasn't made the pain any less. Perhaps now that she's acknowledged it, it will ebb over time. Ringo matters, but he doesn't define her or what she'll do. She can push through it. Mizu always expected to complete her revenge alone, so she hasn't lost her ability to seek it.
"We should eat the noodles," Mizu says. "I might cry through it, but I should stop avoiding them." That was a conscious choice turned habit. She shouldn't avoid a significant part of familiar cuisine because of Ringo. That can start tonight. It won't be what Vergil expected or wanted it to be like, but it'll be good for her. That might even be better.
She makes no move for them to transition to that activity, however. She continues to hold onto Vergil, part of her face pressed against his shoulder and neck. The tears still come, albeit more slowly, and she breathes him in, the scent far stronger with him present than was in his shirt alone. Somehow she can both value her time alone and miss him when he's gone, his quiet presence in the same space a comfort even when all they do is read their respective books. It's easier to face the fact she's lost Ringo when she still has someone by her side.
"Alright," he says, nodding his agreement and similarly not making a motion to move them from where they are. "When you're ready."
Choosing to remain here on the couch within the safety of his arms is not some admission of weakness or a lack of resolve and conviction for Mizu. Vergil knows well enough by now that once her mind is made up, she remains committed to her intent and will see it through. But he also understands needing more time to collect and prepare herself with such a raw nerve being exposed tonight.
And frankly, he could use the time as well. Vergil understands more her reaction and why it would never have crossed his mind to ask in the first place not being left solely to a defect on his part. But his intention of celebrating a holiday with her in a manner more familiar to her cannot happen. What was meant to be a demonstration of his affection and care for her, further reinforcing her importance to him, is now made a more somber affair by virtue of its associations. It's difficult for him to not still feel at least small pangs of guilt for having sparked this sort of emotional outburst from Mizu, and he knows it will be difficult yet still to not have his heart ache on occasion throughout the process even while knowing such feelings require an outlet of some kind.
He holds her for as long as she needs him to hold her, touching at warm skin with his soothing circles throughout and saying nothing further even as he can feel when her breathing seems to settle from the earlier sobs, lengthening themselves out once more.
Vergil does not rush her, and Mizu lets herself cry. Her emotions readily display themselves, unless she's steeled herself in advance to sheath them, but the times others have seen her cry usually come with forcing herself to continue with whatever she must. There's never been much space or time for crying. It's a strange privilege to lie there with Vergil and dampen his clothes and not once need to do anything else. So her breath eases, her tears stop, and her grip loosens. Vergil remains through it all on a night she did not expect him.
That calm turns to resolve. There's little point in putting it off now that Mizu's determined it will happen. She can cook noodles badly, but presumably Vergil is competent at it since he brought the supplies over. He relied on her to cook food for them at Amrita, when the options were limited, but here, the rest of the time, they're far better off with his cooking. Mizu hardly expects him to eat food she makes without complaint when there are other options available to them.
Loosening her grip, Mizu pulls herself and with her to some extent Vergil. There's not enough room for her to get up without involving him. She gets to a sitting position and pulls her hair back into its usual style. It will not get in the way, as she can certainly assist with cooking—the simple obvious tasks like chopping. Her gaze toward the kitchen is determined, more like she's readying herself to face a group of soldiers than simple kitchen duty.
She takes and squeezes Vergil's hand. "Lets do this."
Vergil sits up with Mizu as she moves to do so, moving them both more back into their own spaces. While she sorts her hair out, tying it back, he gently wipes away the last traces of her tears from her face until she takes his hand again and squeezes it. He nods at her request to begin before rising to his feet and pulling her to her own. Vergil does not drop her hand as he walks with her towards the kitchen, not even when briefly bending down to gather the bag he left there on the floor with the ingredients that didn't need to be stored away in the fridge. Setting it on the counter once in the kitchen, he only drops her hand when he steps over to her fridge, leaving her free to empty the bag if she so chooses. Most of what he brings out of the fridge is for her to prepare as toppings with green onion and fishcake for her to slice, and shrimp and an egg for tempura. Only the container of the start of the broth is for Vergil.
"I'm entrusting the tempura to you while I finish the broth. Think you can manage?"
Vergil would like to believe tempura shouldn't be that beyond Mizu's capabilities in the kitchen given the simplicity of its ingredients, and more of the finesse coming from de-veining and laying the shrimp out flat. At least not with him still keeping an eye on her to be certain she doesn't add too much of any one ingredient to the batter, and that she manages to get the correct consistency before dipping the shrimp in it. Maybe if left to her own devices entirely, he would be a little more concerned.
While not the one leading this venture in cooking, Mizu empties the bag Vergil leaves on the counter while he fetches what his double put away in the refrigerator. If she were less on edge, it would be amusing that he used it for such a mundane purpose, logical though it may have been. At the moment, laying everything out in a hopefully logical manner. It is better to have something to do, to be a part of it, than to sit and watch and marinate in her feelings.
The question makes her eye the egg and flour like they may draw swords and attack her. That would be easier to handle honestly. Mizu shrugs.
"Mine has never come out quite right," she admits. It's gone wrong in different ways, the various ways she tried to make it for Mikio. She hasn't bothered with it since. She doesn't need to eat something that fancy. The ingredients may be simple, yes, but making them all work together seems some strange alchemy. That will not prevent her from trying once more tonight or eating it, however badly it turns out.
The shrimp will be easy. That's simple knife work. Mizu pulls the shrimp her way and starts with that.
"Then perhaps tonight will be different," he says, and to his credit, without any semblance of doubt slipping into his voice. In all honesty, Vergil's not entirely confident, but it's a minor issue if the tempura does not come out perfectly light and airy. It is only a piece of the whole after all, and even if the point of all this has ultimately changed, Vergil wouldn't want for this to be something made by his hand alone.
As Mizu busies herself with the shrimp, Vergil pulls out a saucepan and carefully empties the container with the kombu into the pot. All of its contents—both water and the strip of kombu—go in as he sets it to a lower heat. He sets the container aside in favor of another pot which he begins to fill with water for the noodles. That he sets on a higher heat, intent on bringing the water to a boil. Once the kombu reaches a decent simmer, he removes it from the water. There's a brief moment where Vergil considers asking Mizu if she would like to keep it so that she can make seasoning for her rice later before he realizes that even if she knows how exactly to make it, it's probably better served in his kitchen than hers. So, back into the container it goes before Vergil puts fish flakes in place of the kombu into the water. He leaves the heat on it only for a handful of seconds before cutting the heat and allowing it to steep. With the room for a pause in his own work, Vergil steps over to Mizu and places a hand at her lower back, kissing her hair.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
NYE
At least then if she means to greet him with a sharp blade, that's by her choice then rather than instinct.
Tonight, however, he would prefer that's not how she chooses to greet him when he appears outside her cabin. It's not particularly late into the evening, but one would not be able to tell this time of year in Wintermute. Although not as bothered by the cold as he would be were he not half-demon, Vergil still isn't keen on remaining outside for long once the portal behind him closes. He crosses the short distance to her front door, and lets himself into the warm cabin.
"Mizu," he calls to her as he steps inside, just in case she was upstairs and did not hear the noise outside well enough. Vergil sets down both the bag he was carrying and Yamato so that he can shrug off his coat, hanging it up in the entryway. He also takes the time to toe off his boots. They didn't accumulate much snow, but he'd still rather not drag it around through her home. As he takes them off, he says, "I hope you didn't have any particular plans for tonight."
Frankly, Vergil doesn't anticipate that she does. It's New Year's Eve, but she's not exactly the sort to want to go out and socialize at a party. Which is why he didn't bother telling her in advance that he planned on making toshikoshi soba with her, and wanted it to be more of a surprise. It seemed the better choice than presenting her with a Christmas present. Not that Vergil thinks she would have opposed a gift at Christmas, but... Well, Vergil knows well enough from their conversations that it would certainly be a little more complicated than either of them would likely prefer. This, however, was something she hopefully had some experience with if his research was at all correct. Or even if she did not have direct experience, she would have at least perhaps heard of it.
He picks up the bag of ingredients and leaves Yamato by the doorway, stepping out of her entry way and more properly in the cabin.
"I also hope you haven't..." Vergil trails off as he catches sight of her, stopping almost mid-step as he does. His head tilts as the beginnings of a smile tugs at one corner of his lips as he looks her up and down. "Mizu... Is that my shirt?"
It's not exactly as though Vergil and Mizu have overlapping tastes and preferences in their clothes, so he knows it is, and she knows it is. He just probably wasn't meant to see her in it.
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So she ends up on the sofa reading about winter traditions in London in Vergil's shirt. It still smells of him, though the scent grows faint given how many nights she's worn it since he last did. He will likely spend the night soon, based off how their pattern has settled, and Mizu will get a new shirt to wear in the evenings or nights that he is not. So far as routines go, theirs is a good one, and now that she visits him, sometimes her clothes smell a little of him when she comes home.
The sound of someone's arrival is a familiar one that means Vergil. Mizu smiles before looking down in alarm. She looks at the stairs, but the door opens and Mizu refuses to be caught fleeing upstairs in Vergil's shirt even more than she'd prefer not to be caught in it at all. Her cheeks redden when she catches sight of Vergil because that means he can see her and exactly what she's wearing.
Mizu closes the book and sets it aside on the nearby table. She crosses her arms, flushing further at the question, and looks just to the side of his face. "It was in my closet."
As though that's a particularly compelling argument.
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Vergil steps further into her living room, setting his bag down on the coffee table for the moment and slides into the seat on the couch beside her. He presses a kiss to her warm, flushed cheek.
"I should hope so. Or else I have questions as to how you managed to smuggle my clothes out of my own house while I was with you nearly the entire time," he says, making light of her response, but not the fact she's wearing his shirt. He wraps an arm around behind her, resting his hand on her opposite hip without pulling her too him as a means of trying to offer her comfort and further affection. "It's a lovely surprise to see you in it. It looks good on you, and when I wear it next, your scent will be on it stronger than just sitting among your clothes in the closet.
"Although I should be angry with you." He presses a kiss to her temple. "I came here with a purpose in mind, and you've the audacity to drive me to distraction so quickly. How am I meant to concentrate with thoughts of you in only that shirt, hm? Just couldn't let me win this once, could you?"
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His next words assure her that he seems to enjoy the same thing as she with his clothes. When they come to her cabin, they smell of him. At the end of the day, when Mizu knows he's not coming, she has formed the habit of wearing his shirts, one until it no longer smells of him. Then another. They rotate regularly enough that there's usually one for her to wear, and Mizu's taken care not to wear them when she thinks he's most likely to come. In the pattern of his comings and goings at her cabin, tonight isn't one she expected him. Amused, she asks, "You smell me on your shirts?"
Mizu leans into his touch when he mentions distractions, not of any mind to make it immediately easier. She rests her arm on his lap, hand gently caressing his knee. "If you are so readily distracted, perhaps you should give me a reason to let you go and return to your purpose."
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"My senses are a little more enhanced than a human's, including my sense of smell," he says, but ultimately leaving it at that. Mizu is smart enough to fill in for herself on how her scent may linger just enough upon him that he can still smell it when it might escape the notice of others.
Mizu leans closer to him and places a hand on his knee, and he doesn't know why he is remotely surprised that she would play dirty like this. As she does in battle, Mizu only truly concerns herself with the outcome. The process in which she reaches that desired outcome need not follow established rules and conditions. All is fair.
"Because I have been soaking kombu for at least four hours to ensure the flavor is right for the broth," he says, his free hand taking hold of her chin. He tips her face up to provide him access to her neck, bending down close as though he intends to claim it with his kisses. He stops just short of touching her skin with his lips. Two can play at this game, as it were. "But if it goes any longer, it will need to go in the refrigerator overnight, and we will have to wait until tomorrow."
He pulls back a little, releasing her chin in favor of tracing the line of her neck instead.
"Which I suppose wouldn't be the greatest tragedy, but I believe toshikoshi soba is meant to be eaten tonight, not tomorrow," he says as his fingertips work their way back up until he can caress her face.
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It jars her out of the moment.
She blinks, but the fingers along her skin are more than enough to confirm her situation. Vergil has always cooked more than her, and though she's not used to thinking of him making familiar Japanese food, he's by far the better of them in the kitchen. By the time she's caught up personally with the moment, he's discussing toshikoshi soba, and Mizu blanches at their mention. After so long in Folkmore, the reminder of Ringo shouldn't hurt as much as it does, but she has forced thoughts of him from her mind again and again until she can go days, even weeks, without thinking of him once. So sharply having soba, the food that made their paths cross and of which Ringo was personally so proud, thrown in her face— Vergil may as well have impaled her with Yamato. It would hurt less.
She closes her eyes, foolish tears escaping regardless, and Mizu forcibly relaxes the fingers she hadn't realized were digging into Vergil's leg. Doing her best to block out everything, even Vergil, for a couple moments, Mizu focuses on her breathing. She gets it back under control: long steady breath in and an even longer exhale. It's the same practice by which she clears her mind to make steel and swords put to different use.
In a few moments, Mizu's calmer. Even without the aid of something cold to shock her system, she can breath. Her breathing remains shallower than normal but deep enough not to hyperventilate. Vergil has soba noodles in his grocery bags mere feet away from her. This fact, though shocking, doesn't send her into a panic. That's good. Her heart aches, and Mizu knows it isn't merely the product of how long she's been in Folkmore but the way she and Ringo parted ways. He wouldn't work with her save by an agreement to save Akemi, what she refused to do in the village that day. They aren't what they were. They never were. Mizu was never who Ringo thought she was. The distance is more than a world away.
"That's," Mizu manages, as though she didn't panic in response, "right."
She swallows and fights the urge to make a joke that Vergil wouldn't want her New Year's Eve soba. It doesn't take swordfather to recognize such a strong negative reaction to a thoughtful, actually, plan to celebrate the holiday. Mizu takes a deeper breath with only a few hitches in it. "That's, thank you. I understand."
Even with Lore, it isn't something done entirely on a whim. Vergil's already invested hours in it before Mizu even knew. It's more impressive given he could make it go faster by using Lore to skip any of the steps. He hasn't. He doesn't. That's not how Vergil does things. Yet Ringo's voice rings in her ear, the bell too as he gives it back to her, every harsh word and snub. It stings.
Mizu looks at Vergil, somewhat resigned that something will get talked about. As little as she wants to discuss Ringo, she also will not lie to Vergil.
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Terrible does not really begin to reflect how he feels right now. He's cut her to the quick, and in retrospect it feels so obvious. Mizu has spent so much of her life excluded from things, even simple ones like sharing a bowl of noodles to mark the end of a year. Even if she was aware of the tradition as he'd hoped she would be, who in her life would have invited her to partake in it? Master Eiji was the closest possibility and even that was no guarantee. No, it was most likely she was never included or worse.
So, he realizes now at the worst possible time that he should have asked. But he had been too damned focused and wrapped up in wanting it to be a gift to her because he hasn't yet since they've known one another or become more than just friends. And because Vergil assumed she would be pleased by not being roped into a Christmas celebration, for him to have taken the time to find something familiar to her. But he should have asked. He knows better than that. It was selfish and stupid of him not to think of this exact scenario as a possibility. He knows better than to be so thoughtless like this.
He shakes his head a little.
"No..." he says faintly, his arm around her moving so that he can rub gentle circles at the center of her back. "We, um—..."
Vergil clears his throat to speak more firmly.
"Forget it. I shouldn't have— I wasn't thinking, Mizu. I'm sorry." He presses a kiss to her hairline and returns to holding her close with an arm. "We can spend the night together like we usually do instead. I wanted to be here with you tonight regardless of what we do since it's been a while since we last saw one another. It's okay."
Vergil does not know explicitly why she's reacted the way she has, but he does not ask. As far as he's concerned, he's done enough damage. Prying into something like that, something that could put such hurt in her eyes that some part of her fire appears to dim, and leads her to look at him like she must steel herself further for the terrible inevitably of unearthing whatever wound this happens to be is bound to make it worse.
"Let me put away what needs to be refrigerated for the night. Everything else can stay in the bags, and I can bring it all home with me in the morning. It won't go to any sort of waste with Dante and Nero. We can have a quiet evening together after that."
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She goes so far as to pull herself into Vergil's lap, her legs straddling his waist. Her hand keeps a painfully tight grip on his shoulder, and Mizu swallows because she understands her actions and doesn't at the same time. Vergil has never abandoned her, and he's never left her when she's vulnerable and in pain. She trusts him to stay with her, to return when he leaves, and that so long as their relationship does not interfere with his relationships with Nero and Dante he will be steady in it. The better his relationships get with them, the more stable, the more secure their relationship feels. So Mizu understands that Vergil getting up to put the food away would not be leaving her. He already said repeatedly that he wants to be here tonight. Mizu knows all that.
Yet Vergil standing and leaving even so much as to cross the room toward the kitchen she can see entirely from the couch is too much.
"Stay," Mizu says. It's not a command so much as a request, one that feels all too desperate in the moment. More softly, "Stay."
She feels terrible and needy and small. Like Ringo leaving wasn't just a year ago but an echo of an empty shack on fire and a woman, a mother, not dead but gone. It all happened in an instant, those memories, and this fierce mood that threatens to crack her open. None of it is Vergil's fault. Of everything they've discussed, she's left Ringo out of it. Ringo and his noodles. His noodles, his medicines, his rice balls, everything. A typhoon she called him, and he is, even in his absence. Especially in his absence.
Mizu frowns, his words of apology confusing. As understandable as it is that Vergil would be sorry for hurting her, even unintentionally, he seems to think he should have known better. "You didn't, you don't, have a way to know. It's not your fault. It's mine. What happened was my fault, and I didn't tell you. Don't blame yourself."
That seems important, even among everything else, that Vergil doesn't blame himself for something he had no way of knowing about.
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He disbelieves her when Mizu suggests he ought to be blameless. She's right in that she did not tell him and her implication that his actions did not bear malice or ill will towards her for that fact alone. But Mizu has told him enough of other incidents, of her life in general, that this was not as safe an assumption as he treated it. And she has been hurt because he was not vigilant enough and not nearly as considerate as he led himself to believe he was being. Vergil says nothing to her absolution because he cannot accept it and debating the point seems like the wrong choice.
Well, realistically, everything feels a degree of wrong to him right now. But things by his own choice especially lend themselves in that direction right now. Vergil does not trust his judgment in navigating this uncertain and new territory with her. So, he relents to her request to stay. He trusts her judgment that remaining right where he is rather than stepping away from her for even a moment is for the best even as parts of him chafe because of it and want nothing more than to escape into the kitchen for just a moment. Just a moment.
"Alright," he says quietly, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt that she wears as he holds her just a little tighter. "I'll stay."
Over her shoulder, his eyes dart to the kitchen again. Vergil more permanently eliminates it as a possibility than even her on top of him like this. His clone manifests at his will to complete the task instead of disturbing her to do it himself. As it begins rifling through the bag for what needs to be put away, Vergil swings his legs up onto the couch and lies down on his side with Mizu, placing her tightly and firmly in the space between him and the back of the couch. He tangles their legs together as he kisses her face, peppering it with light kisses in a slow, intentional manner from the tip of her nose to her brow to her cheek to the corner of her lips. With her wearing his shirt, he's able to slip a hand beneath its hem to lightly trace along the warm skin of her side from her waist to the bandages she binds with.
He does not know if she needs more than this. Frankly, he's uncertain she needs this much when he's already said he would stay. But Vergil tries to do as she's asked of him to remain close, following it with other ways they tend to be close with one another to assure her she needs not try to convince him or that he would choose anything over her request right now. Anxiously, he hopes he hasn't misunderstood though, and that this gentle intimacy is able to make her feel better, not worse.
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Vergil doesn't say anything either, but he holds her tight. The world shrinks from her cabin to the couch. She feels his trousers against her bare legs, his hand against her side, and his kisses against her face. They're small things, but each spot he kisses cools when he leaves it. That coolness brings her back a little more to her own awareness. It cuts through the sense of imminent loss and abandonment to leave embarrassment in its wake. Here she is unable to appreciate a nice gesture, Vergil celebrating the new year per her traditions.
Mizu focuses on her breathing, even as she's bewildered she reacted that way. Oh, she understands it's about Ringo, but that it showed so clearly outside her own mind is mortifying. As emotive as she is, as much as she shows her emotions unless she needs to guard them (and in Folkmore, she rarely needs to), it goes beyond that. It's something to consider, but it's not most urgent.
Although Vergil doesn't ask about her reaction, Mizu feels like he deserves to know. She hates the thought of talking about Ringo. Most of the time she manages not to think about it, about him. She also hates the idea of saying nothing and Vergil stewing in confusion and self-blame. Silence, after all, is not the same as agreement or acceptance. Mizu's done that far too many times to think otherwise. Repeating herself that it's not his fault is pointless. Only an explanation can make sense of it.
Mizu lets herself breathe him in. Naturally he smells even stronger of himself than his shirt did, and if she's honest, she didn't want to ask him to do something for the holiday in case he had plans with his family but did miss him and want his company. That's one reason she's wearing his shirt. She didn't imagine it going like this. So it takes her a little time to do anything else when Vergil's holding her and close and part of her just wants to stay like that.
"Has anyone thought you were great, only for them to get disappointed when you proved only to be a flawed person?" Mizu asks, by means of introduction to the topic of Ringo. Not that she's ever claimed to be great or cared about greatness for greatness's sake. She's a good swordsman because it's necessary for her revenge, not to right every wrong in the world, not to right any wrong. Ringo is the one who built his image of her, no matter what she said. She didn't convince him of it, and it still hurt when he realized it, when she'd grown used to having him around.
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She speaks eventually though, and asks him a question. Vergil's brow furrows slightly in his confusion as he shakes his head. "No."
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"I tracked down Fowler via his business partner. I got his business partner's name from a flesh trader with a flashy, European gun. I stepped in when he attacked the cook at a noodle house, cut his gun to pieces, cut off some of his fingers too, and left once I had the information I needed," Mizu shrugs. A simple matter that is nothing out of the ordinary in her hunt for her fathers.
"The cook followed me. I tried to dissuade him every way I could: with words, by tying him to a tree, through hiring prostitutes, by threatening his life... He kept following me. I needed his help to get through a checkpoint, and no matter how much I told him the dark path I was on, he wouldn't listen.
"He thought I was great." Mizu's deadpan with that line. She doesn't believe it, not the way Ringo meant.
"We went through a lot together." Mizu would likely have died without Ringo's help. Repeatedly. It's uncomfortable to think about that, when she did so much to prevent him from being there in the first place, when he wouldn't have been there at all if he'd truly understood her.
"Akemi's father's men came for her outside Madam Kaji's. I let them take her, and Ringo saw who I was. We parted ways." Her affect is flat, though there's still pain behind it. Ringo left. Everyone leaves, but he hurt more than most. He thought more of her than most. There's so much behind Akemi too, a complex relationship there, but Mizu doesn't have the energy to explain everything in one go. Akemi isn't the point. She was only the catalyst for Ringo to realize what kind of person Mizu is. It could have been anyone.
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Vergil does not believe Mizu is really the one to bear responsibility for how Ringo reacted. For someone to witness such a display of violence upon meeting someone as the one Mizu describes, as Vergil knows her to be capable of doing, there is a certain willful ignorance that goes into deluding oneself into believing there is nothing Mizu would not do in the name of her revenge. Especially when no doubt there were other repeated incidents after that which Mizu glazed over in favor of reaching the conclusion.
Rather than speaking right away, Vergil sighs, his hand at her side dipping to the small of her back before nudging her closer in order to hold her tighter. She does not need to speak of the pain in losing Ringo for Vergil to know it's there. Even without that sudden panic and tears at the prospect of soba, the way Mizu keeps her tone so even and flat is telling. But there is also the preamble that makes it clear how much it must have wounded her. Even if Ringo's assumptions were false, he was the first person to have likely held her in such high regard, to have persisted even when she pushed him away as hard as she possibly could. Vergil does not know what it is to lose someone like that as not even Dante makes a close enough comparison for him to feel he can truly empathize with her. But what else could it have felt beyond devastating to have him reject her so much that he left? To find that there was a limit to such fierce companionship that perhaps she began to believe was truer than anything else she'd experienced in her life up to that point?
But then that also brings it back to the other parts of this to unpack. Vergil knows how Mizu is perceived and what her world has told her she is regardless of any evidence to the contrary. It's not unsurprising to hear her speak of it as though she tried to convince Ringo what a devil she is because that is no doubt exactly what she did and how she felt. How she probably still feels even now.
So Ringo is a wound, but not just any wound. Master Eiji had expressed his frustration and anger with her when she left. And Mikio and her surrogate mother were both too selfish to love her as she ought to be loved. But this was different. He is the first that her revenge truly cost her all while reopening the primal wounds that came coupled with the origin of her birth. She lost a companion, someone loyal to her and seemed to believe there was good within her, only to have it reaffirmed for her that there is nothing like that within her. It really is no wonder she reacted the way she did.
Rather than try to parse through everything told and implied, Vergil asks an important question, "Have you seen him since?"
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Mizu frowns and suspects Vergil will make some point regarding that, but it was not some joyous reunion. Ringo rejected her and refused to speak with her under almost any circumstances. He made his feelings clear every day they were there, so that Mizu could not go a moment in the same place without knowing how he felt. No gap has been bridged between them.
"Yes," Mizu says. "Taigen and I were nearly dead after facing Fowler the first time. He brought us to swordfather's. There he snubbed me and made clear I was no one to him. I struck a bargain with him to come with me to Edo. In return for him aiding me, I would find and help free Akemi."
She pauses. "We only talked business on the way to Edo. It was not like before."
Mizu leans into Vergil and his warm presence. She takes comfort in that even as she waits for him to strike with his words, to try to make the parting with Ringo somehow less than it actually is. No doubt there will be sound logic to them, but no logic can undercut the truth, the false bond now broken. Ringo did not even follow their plan and man his post. He followed Taigen into the shogun's palace. He does not listen to her or value her opinion, only her skills with violence put to his use. To Akemi's. She does not even know if he will be at the place they agreed to meet, when she goes back and kills Fowler. Not when he hasn't followed anything else she's said. Why would he, when he thinks so little of her?
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"No one to him is likely a stretch," he says, although not for the reasons Mizu may assume. Vergil does not continue with an assertion that Ringo must deeply care for Mizu still. Instead, he says, "Snubbing you requires effort on his part. It was an unkind thing to do from an otherwise soft man from what you've implied of his character."
There's no negative judgment passed when he describes Ringo as soft. Not overtly, in any case, as it was when Vergil spoke of Mikio. What he views as weaknesses in Ringo, Vergil would sooner believe stem from a certain naivete. It's still not something he approves of, but it's not comparable to the sort of man Mikio was in his weakness and insecurities.
"I don't pretend to know his thoughts, but I would hazard to guess if he thought of you as no one, he would treat you with the sort of banal civility and kindness he would anyone else. It seems to me he had not yet resolved his anger and disappointment over your decision when your paths crossed again." It was most likely not an easy thing for him to do given how much he clearly built Mizu up to be someone else in his mind. There was a lot to reconcile there as far as that was concerned. But those feelings were most likely further complicated by the fact he played a part in saving Mizu's life on at least that occasion, too. Regardless of how he felt, there had to be a certain degree of relief that she made a recovery from her injuries even just out of a basic kindness for another person, never mind someone who he once forged a bond with through a great deal. "And if not his own behavior towards you, then at least by your reaction tonight, it seems to me that he would still hold such strong feelings towards you."
After all, if it managed to rattle Mizu, how could it not have had a similar or even greater effect on someone like Ringo?
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It's not exactly the reasoning Mizu expected of Vergil, but she cannot deny that Ringo was matter of fact but not rude when he rejected Taigen's offer. He pointedly ignored her so that she knew he ignored her. He offered Master Eiji the same ways he'd helped her and blatantly took on the role of apprentice. Master Eiji's general grumpy disposition about it had no effect on Ringo. Why would it? Mizu's didn't.
Perhaps that is why he saved her. He hadn't worked out his feelings, so he needed her alive until he accomplished that. Her death would tilt the scales, though Mizu could not say whether it would leave Ringo angry or sad, only that it would be more difficult for him to gain closure. She has no regrets about killing Mikio. He deserved it. Yet that final confrontation, that day, remained a wound. It remains one to a degree, though Vergil has made it easier to close chapters of her time with Mikio, to see and to understand flaws and problems she hadn't before, that took having someone who treats her better to truly see. Mikio treated her better than she ever expected, but that does not mean he treated her well. Ringo, soft Ringo, needs her alive to be mad at.
It's a form of caring to be loathed personally.
"That is not so different from Taigen," Mizu muses, "He's so determined to kill me in a duel to regain his honor that he fought by my side repeatedly to prevent anyone else from killing me. He even endured torture and didn't give me up, all while continuing to demand a duel to the death." She shakes her head. Honor is a dumb reason to die.
Ringo may never want Mizu dead. He isn't that much like Taigen, but it's possible for anger to motivate someone to provide aid, even to the one they are angry with. Fowler tempted her to do the same thing, to hate him but to keep him alive to be useful, to use her anger for his own survival. Mizu considered it, and had the fox spirit not brought her to Folkmore, she likely would accept for the simple reason she could kill Fowler after she killed Routley and Skeffington.
"It's been a year. It shouldn't have such an effect on me," Mizu says. She hasn't eaten soba the entire time she's been in Folkmore. She's avoided Ringo every way she can. So why, after a year apart and without thought, should she react so strongly? "It wasn't a surprise that he too would become disillusioned with me. It was only a matter of time. If it weren't Akemi, it would have been something else."
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Vergil does not refer to Mizu's decision with Akemi. It is unlikely that even with such hindsight that Mizu would choose differently than what has come to pass any more than Vergil would have chosen differently for himself in the absence of his son's existence. Neither of them are the sort of people to back down from their convictions, and they pursue them with the understanding there is to be a cost to them. Thus, they accept what comes to pass. Mizu lacks someone like Nero in her life to make her question or challenge her decisions, to come to bear the regrets that Vergil has from his time as V. So, of course, that's not where her complicated feelings arise. No, she is likely still wrestling with a loss for the first time ever. Where other instances she could fall back on feeling as though it were inevitable and beyond her control, this is far more confusing. Her actions are what led to Ringo remaining by her side even when by all logic, they should not have done so, but they are also what drove him away. Not her gender nor her race, but her actions.
"Grief is a terrible feeling." It was the whole reason Vergil refused his humanity for so long, after all. But this not the time for that conversation. He presses a kiss to the corner of her jaw. "But if you should feel anything after a loss like what you had with Ringo even with his mistaken belief in your path being different to what it is, it's grief. Even after all this time."
Perhaps especially after all this time when she has no doubt refused it in never speaking of him, but it's not an emotion Vergil's known to truly ever leave. It grows a little lighter, something one eventually becomes accustomed to, but it never leaves. Mizu has and certainly carries her own grief over others. That is not a foreign concept to her even if she generally disallows for much dwelling upon it. But this is different. This is not the grief she holds for a mother and husband who did not love her. This is not the grief she held onto even past reconciliation with swordfather. This is not the grief she holds for a father that she's transformed into a violent anger. This is something different and unknown. Something fresher than all of those wounds.
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"Now that he truly understands me and what I will do for my revenge, our differences are irreconcilable," Mizu says, "When I return home, I will kill Fowler, return to swordfather as I promised, and leave Japan. I may see Ringo again one last time, but he will stay in Japan, and I will go. If he hasn't settled his feelings by then, he can do so in my absence."
As for her own feelings, walking away to another world hasn't resolved them. Crossing an ocean or two will not either. Mizu may fare similarly to Folkmore, able to go for long periods of time without thinking of Ringo, but the same way Mikio haunted her when Fowler drugged her, thoughts of Ringo will return. As they returned tonight. It's aggravating. It's a grief that never should have come to be. Mizu knew from the start he didn't understand her. She knew he would leave once he did. She simply couldn't convince him of that until he witnessed something he could not condone. She knew it would happen, so why does it hurt so much?
It occurs to her that the same will happen to Vergil. It's a pain and loss they've both known will come since the first moment they became something. It's not something that could last, not truly. Under the best of circumstances, one of them will leave. Vergil to go home with Nero and Dante, or Mizu to seek her revenge. They will part ways, and it will hurt. Far worse, she suspects, than this, for she's let Vergil far closer. Mizu holds onto him tightly for the period she has him, for now. This terrible pain will feel like a minor scrape in comparison. The thought does not make the pain over Ringo feel any less. It refuses to scale down with the idea she kept so many things at a distance from Ringo. It refuses to care about any such logic. It hurts.
"I hate it," Mizu declares and wishes she could cut it out. Yet as much as it hurts, as bad as any injury she's sustained, she knows she cannot wish she never met Ringo. He saved her life. She grips Vergil's clothes under her hands tightly and cries into his shoulder. "It's not fair. I didn't ask for this. I told him not to think well of me. I'm not great."
It's almost something of a tantrum, except Mizu doesn't expect a response to it. It's what she's felt for so long, poisoning her thoughts and feelings, that it needs to come out like pus from a wound. None of those thoughts matter, save how tightly she's clung to them. She sobs harder. It isn't fair, but her life has never been fair. Not even the few good things that have happened in it. Mizu cries and hiccups a couple times. There's a name for what it is now, but it doesn't make the grief feel any less awful.
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So, he does not judge Mizu for her response now in both having shared and named what it is she feels. He merely holds her as she clings to him, dampening his shoulder with her sobs. At once it feels like not enough given that it can do nothing to change her feelings or even truly soothe them, and just what she needs by how tightly she burrows herself into his embrace and seeks out his comfort. For a few moments, Vergil lets her cry uninterrupted and without commentary from him, his hold upon her protective and firm.
"I know," he murmurs gently. "I know how much it hurts. I know."
He presses a kiss to her hair and rubs soothing circles upon her back.
"But no other hurt has been able to stop you, and neither will this one. You'll be okay."
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Vergil is right. It will not stop her. Avoidance hasn't made the pain any less. Perhaps now that she's acknowledged it, it will ebb over time. Ringo matters, but he doesn't define her or what she'll do. She can push through it. Mizu always expected to complete her revenge alone, so she hasn't lost her ability to seek it.
"We should eat the noodles," Mizu says. "I might cry through it, but I should stop avoiding them." That was a conscious choice turned habit. She shouldn't avoid a significant part of familiar cuisine because of Ringo. That can start tonight. It won't be what Vergil expected or wanted it to be like, but it'll be good for her. That might even be better.
She makes no move for them to transition to that activity, however. She continues to hold onto Vergil, part of her face pressed against his shoulder and neck. The tears still come, albeit more slowly, and she breathes him in, the scent far stronger with him present than was in his shirt alone. Somehow she can both value her time alone and miss him when he's gone, his quiet presence in the same space a comfort even when all they do is read their respective books. It's easier to face the fact she's lost Ringo when she still has someone by her side.
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Choosing to remain here on the couch within the safety of his arms is not some admission of weakness or a lack of resolve and conviction for Mizu. Vergil knows well enough by now that once her mind is made up, she remains committed to her intent and will see it through. But he also understands needing more time to collect and prepare herself with such a raw nerve being exposed tonight.
And frankly, he could use the time as well. Vergil understands more her reaction and why it would never have crossed his mind to ask in the first place not being left solely to a defect on his part. But his intention of celebrating a holiday with her in a manner more familiar to her cannot happen. What was meant to be a demonstration of his affection and care for her, further reinforcing her importance to him, is now made a more somber affair by virtue of its associations. It's difficult for him to not still feel at least small pangs of guilt for having sparked this sort of emotional outburst from Mizu, and he knows it will be difficult yet still to not have his heart ache on occasion throughout the process even while knowing such feelings require an outlet of some kind.
He holds her for as long as she needs him to hold her, touching at warm skin with his soothing circles throughout and saying nothing further even as he can feel when her breathing seems to settle from the earlier sobs, lengthening themselves out once more.
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That calm turns to resolve. There's little point in putting it off now that Mizu's determined it will happen. She can cook noodles badly, but presumably Vergil is competent at it since he brought the supplies over. He relied on her to cook food for them at Amrita, when the options were limited, but here, the rest of the time, they're far better off with his cooking. Mizu hardly expects him to eat food she makes without complaint when there are other options available to them.
Loosening her grip, Mizu pulls herself and with her to some extent Vergil. There's not enough room for her to get up without involving him. She gets to a sitting position and pulls her hair back into its usual style. It will not get in the way, as she can certainly assist with cooking—the simple obvious tasks like chopping. Her gaze toward the kitchen is determined, more like she's readying herself to face a group of soldiers than simple kitchen duty.
She takes and squeezes Vergil's hand. "Lets do this."
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"I'm entrusting the tempura to you while I finish the broth. Think you can manage?"
Vergil would like to believe tempura shouldn't be that beyond Mizu's capabilities in the kitchen given the simplicity of its ingredients, and more of the finesse coming from de-veining and laying the shrimp out flat. At least not with him still keeping an eye on her to be certain she doesn't add too much of any one ingredient to the batter, and that she manages to get the correct consistency before dipping the shrimp in it. Maybe if left to her own devices entirely, he would be a little more concerned.
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The question makes her eye the egg and flour like they may draw swords and attack her. That would be easier to handle honestly. Mizu shrugs.
"Mine has never come out quite right," she admits. It's gone wrong in different ways, the various ways she tried to make it for Mikio. She hasn't bothered with it since. She doesn't need to eat something that fancy. The ingredients may be simple, yes, but making them all work together seems some strange alchemy. That will not prevent her from trying once more tonight or eating it, however badly it turns out.
The shrimp will be easy. That's simple knife work. Mizu pulls the shrimp her way and starts with that.
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As Mizu busies herself with the shrimp, Vergil pulls out a saucepan and carefully empties the container with the kombu into the pot. All of its contents—both water and the strip of kombu—go in as he sets it to a lower heat. He sets the container aside in favor of another pot which he begins to fill with water for the noodles. That he sets on a higher heat, intent on bringing the water to a boil. Once the kombu reaches a decent simmer, he removes it from the water. There's a brief moment where Vergil considers asking Mizu if she would like to keep it so that she can make seasoning for her rice later before he realizes that even if she knows how exactly to make it, it's probably better served in his kitchen than hers. So, back into the container it goes before Vergil puts fish flakes in place of the kombu into the water. He leaves the heat on it only for a handful of seconds before cutting the heat and allowing it to steep. With the room for a pause in his own work, Vergil steps over to Mizu and places a hand at her lower back, kissing her hair.
"How is it coming along over here?"
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