Itsy Bitsy Spider

12. Sunshine & Lollipops

Feitan growled angrily and tried to shake his bangs out of his eyes. The mafia man before him had him at gunpoint, ordering Feitan to tell him everything he knew about the attack. The man demanded to know who he was with, and their motive, shaking the gun in front of him as if it would persuade him to spill information. If he didn't do so, apparently he would be "granted a slow, painful death." A weak threat if he ever heard one. 

He lowered his gaze and in a split second, was behind the man with claws raised. 

He would show him how to interrogate properly.

Digging his sharp nails into the man's flesh, he took his arm and twisted it behind his back. When the man started to blubber empty threats, he gripped harder and yanked, a loud crack echoing in his ears before the man started to scream from the pain. He rolled his eyes. It was just a broken arm, he could suck it up. Kicking in his kneecaps at odd angles, Feitan brought him to the ground. To pull out information from a captured person, you didn't threaten them with a weapon. That was for the weak. Torture was the way to go.

Still, the mafia lackey wouldn't stop. He kept choking out meaningless threats between his screams and begging for Feitan to stop. He was starting to get ticked off. He tortured him for a few more minutes to see if it would lighten his mood, to no avail. Too bad. 

Cutting off his final head for the night, he started to head back to the Cemetery Building for the auction, though still unsatisfied by how he felt. His nerves were still tingling, his hair stood on end with static, and his eyesight  blurry and itching from the smog. His head, still muddled. 

Rein had said "love you too".

Scowling, he buried his hands in his pockets and slipped deeper into his slouch. Why couldn't he get it off of his mind? Why did it still bother him?

It wasn't anything big. It was nothing. Just something she had said, no big deal. She didn't say it so often that you doubted whether it was the truth or just another way of saying goodbye... but he had heard her say it before. Sometimes, not a lot. He estimated only about once or twice a year, she would turn to someone in the middle of an activity or a conversation, smile, and say "Love you!" or something along those lines. Then she would go back to whatever she had been doing, or changed the subject before the person she'd said it to had time to recover.

It was nothing.

It's not like it was the first time she had said it to him or anything. He certainly hadn't been waiting for it. He didn't feel touched. It meant nothing to him. Words exchanged. Conversation. Just words. He'd been using words for a while now and he was fine, so there was no reason that should change now. Then...

Why did he feel this way? When he thought about it, his insides felt like they were constricting and his face went numb. A wave of... some emotion washed over him, and the corners of his mouth began to twitch upwards. He looked pathetic, so he hid it best he could—which was near perfect.

But. Though he hid it when others were around, when he was alone, he took down the mask and immediately his face turned into a bumbling, idiotic, fool almost like Phinks. He looked pathetic, but on the inside, he almost felt...

Happy, he guessed? He didn't like it. Maybe thinking about this rationally would help calm him down.

Rein had said "love you too". What did that mean?

"Love". So she held some sort of affection, and given that the Spiders were the only people she associated with, it was only natural that her affection towards them was the strongest. With no one else to care about, that much was obvious. Who else could she be talking about? She'd been isolated from outside influence since they'd brought her in. She claimed to care for the Troupe members, and it was probably true.