A Devil's Grace 1930

| Chapter Three |

Tanya wiped her lips with the pale verdant green linen napkin, her plate was clear and her mug was empty. Her eyes rested on Valen as she rested the linen back onto the table, raising a brow at his laid back expression as he was watching her.

He had finished eating a few minutes before her. They hadn't bothered with any further small talk, rather trying to finish their food so they could get a move on. 

"You've been watching me eat the entire time, you got your tongue-tied or something?" Tanya sucked some food off of her front teeth before taking a toothpick from the corner of the table.

"It's been three years since I've seen you eat an actual meal," Valen shrugged with a painted smile across his lips as he wore a near-relaxed expression.

Tanya just gave him this long-standing look, not sure if that was a real face he was giving her.

"You still haven't told me why you're helping me," She confronted him once more on the subject as she watched his hands maneuver the plates to the center of the table, stacking them for the waitress to collect. "Let alone why you saved me before... You told me you'd tell me everything."

Valen just continued wearing the same expression as before, a subtle smile that she couldn't recognize as genuine. "There are only three to four reasons why humans help one another."

"And that would be?" Tanya rested her elbow on the table, pressing her chin into it as she gave him this deadpan expression of her own. 

"Profit, Mutual Gain, Love or Survival," Valen expertly blurted out as he placed the silverware on top of the plates. "If its anything other than them, it's just a subcategory."

Tanya's head lifted from her palm in which her chin was resting within. Profit, there was no profit for him keeping her alive or in a cushy lifestyle in which he allowed her to take for granted. Mutual Gain, he did not gain anything from this partnership, if she could even call it that. Survival? She was the only one who was surviving this, and even if she died, he would continue living as long as he stayed out of the crosshairs. 

Love? That was the only one that remained unless what he was doing fell into a subcategory as he suggested. Her azure hues jumped from one of his green eyes to the other.

That was when her gaze fell down to the chocolates which were situated in her lap, a handful still in the box. Do normal people give you decorated boxes of chocolates? Do normal people give a stranger money to live in hiding? Do strangers seek out your friends when your life is in danger?

Tanya looked up at the boy, she didn't know how to take this at all. Was he proclaiming his love to her without actually confessing directly? Why and how, where and when, did this start?

Before being gunned down by Mary Sue in the latter's homeland, she never saw him before. Or had she just never noticed Valen in the background noise that was the battlefield? Letting her arms fall to her sides as she leaned back into the booth, pondering in her thoughts, she could think of plenty of men who could possibly be a good suitor for herself and her pursuit.  

"Valen," her voice cracked as she tried to speak sternly, "I don't think..."

Raising his hand from the table with only his thumb, index and middle finger in the air, he simply smiled and this time it looked genuine. It was as if he didn't want to hear a rejection or even an acceptance. Yet he also said nothing.

"This partnership," Tanya balled her hand in her lap at the skirting of her blue dress that was underlapped by her nightgown, "Why? You don't know me."

"Just before you turned nine, there was a lack of food, the orphanage had no money." Valen slowly shifted out of the booth as he placed the money down on the table. "I ran away, I stowed myself unto a ship destined for the Unified States, and from there joined the International Private Scavenger Group."