Cold-Blooded: A DC Universe Fanfiction (#Wattys2015)

Chapter 6: Yukie: Jian Wu

He fights sleep the way he fights any other enemy, Yukie thought, looking at her sleeping lover. The difference was that sleep always won sooner or later, and it would be better for him if he were beaten by it more often. The human brain wasn't meant to function at ninety percent capacity all the time, neurons firing like sparks in a blast furnace; he needed downtime more than most people.

It wasn't until their fifth or sixth tryst that Slade allowed himself to fall asleep in the same room with her, and even then he nearly shot her when she got up to use the toilet in the middle of the night, that first time. Nowadays he didn't stir so much as a finger should she get up and walk around the room, although he still slept with one hand always on a weapon, automatically switching hands when he happened to roll over in bed, still fast asleep. She wondered if he slept that way at home, if he thought of any place as home, and suspected it didn't matter where he was or who he was with.

She did not know if she was the only person he was sleeping with, in either sense of the word, but she did know that between the two senses, sex and sleep, the latter was the deeper intimacy for him.

In sleep that harshly handsome face was still grim. It only softened a little when he laughed, for that moment, and set again immediately. She smiled, remembering the first time she made him laugh, early on. She asked him, quite seriously, if he minded that she was just using him for sex.

The look on his face was beyond words before he laughed and replied, "Be my guest!" She didn't think he realized what a relief it was to her that he left and went home, leaving her to think her own thoughts and live her own life without all the work that went into a relationship. What there was between them was so simple, so easy-going that it hardly seemed real to her.

He'd thrown the covers partly off, and the ambient light of a downtown Gotham night silvered the shiny patches of scar tissue here and there—no new ones anywhere, and she had had a good look. She was glad he hadn't been injured again. He was a man whose life story was written on his body. The eye patch lay on the bedside table—was it possible the lid drooped less? A parting gift from his late ex-wife, he'd said, and told her the eye might regenerate if he lived long enough.(Unspoken was the implication that he would not.)

But if the late Adeline Kane Wilson had marked him, so too had Yukie. The scar where she had come close to cutting off his ear still remained as well, but in turn she still bore the line on her throat.

What a way to meet…

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Waiting in line outside the defunct steel mill in the near dark, she looked around at the others. She was perfectly comfortable with the frigid wind of a late October night gusting around her, tugging at her furisode sleeves like a persistent little sister, but most of her fellow competitors looked bitten to the bone. Perhaps it was apprehension, not the cold—entirely the wrong state of mind to bring to this contest. Another fighter entered the side door, and they all shuffled forward a few paces.

This was the night of the World Annual Jian Wu competition, held for the first time ever in Gotham City. While Jian Wu was a recognized martial arts school, matches using real blades were illegal in every country on Earth that had ever heard of the practice. Hence this surreptitious, secretive match.

Most of the eighty-odd fighters in line were men—three quarters to four-fifths, she estimated. Was she the only one who brought her own drummer? Tommy Chen stood by his diminutive grandmother, who had come along to act as her attendant, carrying bandages, towels and cold-packs. There were specific rules about attire and weapons allowed for Jian Wu—no protective gear or armor, blades to be no shorter than the length of their wielder's forearm or twelve inches, whichever was longer, and no longer than the length of the arm from pit to wrist or three feet, whichever was shorter. Consequently a number of those assembled were either wearing singlets or completely bare-chested, fooled by the day's balmy temperature.