Guilty Conscience ~ Abbacchio/Fem Reader

Chapter 32: Wolf in Sheep's Clothes

"So this is it?" Y/N asked, turning the arrow over in her hands. Narancia and Fugo had come out of the turtle to take a closer look, leaving Trish to keep her own company. "It looks. . . magical." Narancia mused. His eyes seemed to grow wider the longer he looked at the arrow that Jean Pierre Polnareff — J.P.P — had handed her.

The run to the colosseum had been exhausting. Both she and Abbacchio spent the majority of the journey gasping for air as their lungs pumped oxygen through their bodies. With all of the moulde in the air, breathing became somewhat of a challenge, to say the least. With every step Y/N took, her foot slamming into the cobblestone road, a bolt of pain would shoot up her legs. She was exhausted. Her head was spinning, and to make matters worse, the zipper that Bucciarati had stitched her up with had begun to fade. Her cut was opening up again, and the blood began to pool in her open mouth as she gasped for air. Over and over again she would have to slow down, moving fast enough to keep up with Abbacchio, but steady enough to spit the crimson from her mouth.

The Brute, to her surprise, had slowed too. "Get on," he'd said, nearly coming to a full halt. And she did. Quickly, Y/N jumped onto Abbacchio's back as he began to run again. She pressed the turtle into her chest, resisting the urge to simply drop it in the grass so she could hold onto Abbacchio with both hands. She rested a cheek against the top of his lilac hair, and watched as her blood changed the colour from the shade of moonlight to something closer to the petals of wild cosmos; the pink kind, of course. She loved cosmos. Their delicate petals made them so charming. And the sudden realization that she'd been thinking of flowers made Y/N realize she was probably concussed. I'm going crazy, she told herself matter-of-factly.

"I'm think I'm losing it," she told Abbacchio.

"Don't let go of me," he instructed. But when he spoke to her, it wasn't the usual militant, brooding voice he typically used. It was gentle. Delicate. Like the cosmos she liked so much. He commanded her like a soldier but spoke to her with all of the care he might need for a flower. She was his wild thing. And if it took him a hundred years to make it to the colosseum with her on his back, he would do it without letting her feet touch the ground. Abbacchio's grip on Y/N's thighs tightened comfortably around her skin. She liked it when he held her like this.

And in the end, Abbacchio made it to the coliseum in under a half hour. Breathless, but still breathing. Y/N felt his muscles moving like individual mechanisms of machinery underneath his leather coat. He stopped at a set of stairs, setting her down on a stone stair that aligned with her direct height. If he had lowered her any further, she would become nothing but a heaping pile of green ooze. And although his old self might've wished for a moment like this — a moment where he could drop her on her ass and watch as she melted into a goopy puddle — Abbacchio liked her too much to simply let her go. As she settled on the stairs, he held her hand tightly within his own. "Search the second level while I check around the ground. Call me if you find J.P.P. And don't go up a story unless you're certain he isn't there, sweetheart." He said.

She smiled at him.

"What is it?"

"Your hair. It's all bloody," she admitted, wiping the blood from her forehead with the back of her hand. "It's pink."

Abbacchio cocked his head, wondering if she'd heard any of his instructions. But as more and more blood dripped out from her forehead, he admitted that she probably couldn't focus if she wanted to. "Is it?" He asked with all of the gentleness in the world. His eyes, like oceans of curiosity, shot upwards as if he could see the pink smears atop his own head. Y/N giggled. She squeezed his hand once, and then let go. But Abbacchio didn't. He held her firmly and watched her with an expression she couldn't quite read.