Loveless: Negotiation (Yamato/Koya)
I'm giving up on pretending this isn't going to be a series. It's at least a quartet - I have another story mapped out after this one that hasn't been written yet. We'll see how that one goes. Looking over the word counts, they've gotten longer. I hope the next one doesn't turn out to be fifteen pages or some nonsense.

This one takes place somewhere in between volumes 6 and 7. There are only vague spoilers for Natsuo and Youji.

Nameless Arc:
1. Forever There
2. Phantom Pains

Fandom: Loveless
Pairing: Yamato/Koya
Warnings: Slight mindfuck, moar OCs, Natsuo and Youji (they come with a warning all their own)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4100


Negotiation

"Naa~h. Why should we even help you, Grandmother? After what you did to my Youji." The voice on the phone was loud, nasal, wholly annoying, and Yamato gritted her teeth.

"You did it to him yourself and you know it," she said, leaving out the part where Koya had been the one to trigger the spell that rebounded Natsuo's attack onto his own Sacrifice. It still made her shudder to think of the yawning sensation in her chest when Koya had switched their connections around as easy as breathing.

"How rude," Natsuo said. Yamato could just imagine him – carelessly sprawled across the floor and trading wicked glances with Youji as he spoke. "You're the one who wants something from me, you should be nice to me."

"We're also the ones who won the last time we fought," Yamato said, amused.

"You cheated!" Natsuo said, a sudden noise on the other line indicating that he had sat up. "We would have beat you if you hadn't have cheated!"

"Now, now, you can't know that," Yamato said. "And we never claimed a prize, after all, so consider this our claim."

"That's not the rules," Natsuo said, back to his relaxed, sing-song note. "If you wanted something for winning you should have declared it before the battle even started."

"You're one to talk about rules, when you let your Sacrifice run around dealing non-spell damage in the middle of a battle."

There was a short silence from the other line, and Yamato could swear she could hear him pouting. He had a point, but so did she. "Well!" he finally said, falsely cheerful. "Who needs rules anyway? And it's not like we haven't had anything better to do, now that we came back. It could be fun."

"So you'll do it?" Yamato asked, her tightening grip on the pay phone her only indication that she was at all eager for him to say something one way or the other.

"We'll think about it," he said. "Come to Goura and we'll discuss it."

Yamato snorted. "'Come to Goura,' is it? Come to Goura and run right into Nagisa-sensei now that we're finally rid of her, you mean. Meet us in the middle."

"How terrible, you don't trust us," Natsuo said, but Yamato could tell from the grin she heard on the other end of the phone that he was pleased. The other Zeros might be younger, but they had been raised in the same environment of power games and politicking that Yamato and Koya had been, and it showed. "We'll meet you outside the town then, near the temple."

"Acceptable," Yamato said. Natsuo started to say something else – teasing, no doubt – but Yamato overrode him. "See you then, little boy," she said sweetly, and hung up.

Koya fell in step beside her as she exited the phone booth. "Will they do it?"

A small, assured smile pulled at Yamato's lips. "They'll do it," she said, and she had no doubt she was right.

Even if it was just to get back at Nagisa-sensei, Natsuo would certainly help them. And if Natsuo did it, Youji would do it. From what she had seen of those two, their connection ran very deep. They didn't have a normal Fighter-Sacrifice dynamic because they were more like one person, two halves of the same whole, than any pair Yamato had ever encountered. She had sensed it from the very beginning.

Natsuo is right – in a fair fight, we would lose. Because they're better than us.

"Yamato?" Koya asked, glancing at her.

Yamato smiled wider, to cover the brief flicker of petulance that she was sure had moved over her face. She wanted to believe that nobody could possibly be better than her Fighter, but she also remembered her lessons – there was always someone better. "Just thinking," she said. "Come on, we're meeting them at the temple."

* * * * *

Goura was not a normal town. It was not on any map, it wasn't on a main road. There were no road signs pointing it out. There was no train station. The only way to really know how to get there was to have been there before – or to accidentally wander through, but there was a slim chance of that.

It was home to the Seven Voices Academy, where many of Japan's fighting pairs were trained. Not all – there were splinter groups here and there, and there were always the old families, where pairing ran far back in the blood and parents taught their children spells out of old, moldy records. But every pair worth anything in Japan knew about the Seven Voices.

Yamato leaned against the archway leading up to the temple, drumming her fingers on her arm. They were supposed to have been here by now.

She felt Koya's hand slip around her waist – to comfort the both of them, she was sure. Neither of them enjoyed being this close to the very woman they had broken away from, and Koya, she knew, was still skeptical about the plan.

"There you are, Grandmother," Youji's voice came floating up to them from the bottom of the stairs, both boys taking them two at a time until they drew even with each other.

Now it was Yamato's turn to lay a hand on Koya – she and Natsuo were bristling at each other, sizing each other up. It was normal for when two Fighters came near each other, but Yamato knew it was more than that – their earlier defeat of Zero might have left them wanting a rematch.

But Youji was all casual, his hands in his pockets. He clearly wasn't after a fight, so Yamato let herself relax as well. "You're late," she said.

Natsuo and Youji both shrugged it off like it didn't even matter. To them, it probably didn't. "Natsuo told me about your plan," Youji said, a wicked grin stealing over his features. "Breaking into Nagisa-sensei's lab?"

"We want our records," Koya said. "The ones about us. We want to know how she did it."

"How she made us?" Youji asked, curious.

"How she made us," Koya corrected. "It was probably different for you."

Youji and Natsuo exchanged glances. "What makes you think so, Grandmother?" he asked.

"You can call her Sakagami-san," Yamato said. Koya's family name sounded strange on her tongue – she hadn't used it in years. She hadn't even known it until long after they had met.

The Zeros' ears came forward at that. "What? You don't have Nagisa-sensei's name?" Natsuo asked. "We do. Sagan Natsuo, Sagan Youji, Sagan Nagisa."

"No," Yamato said. "And our family names aren't the same, either. Mine is Nakano. You can call me that."

Natsuo's eyes narrowed, and Koya shifted. Their power fields buzzed briefly, and then subsided. Natsuo had apparently decided he wasn't going to do... whatever he'd been thinking about. A spell of some kind, surely, but it would have been a mistake against Koya.

"You could be right," Youji said, like nothing had ever happened next to him. "It could have been different, with you. Where is your Zero?"

Yamato and Koya both went utterly still. It was a completely innocent question to ask – completely innocent, if the two had been out of the information stream for a while, back under Nagisa's shelter, and hadn't heard of their battle with Tameless.

"Yeah, yeah," Natsuo said, eager. "Ours is right here." He grabbed Youji's hand and extended it for him, and they both saw the neat "0" on his palm.

Yamato glanced sideways at Koya. It was her that had decided to battle without their names before, her that had declared them as having lost it. It was a Fighter's place to declare or reveal a name at all, and Yamato wouldn't interfere.

"It was here," Koya finally said, pulling the neckline of her shirt down to expose the top of her breast, pointing at the unmarked skin.

They both leaned forward, their eyes getting wide. Yamato pulled her shirt down without being asked, revealing the matching patch of skin where their own "0" should have been, but wasn't.

"You're lying," Natsuo said, hushed by the sheer magnitude. "Only blanks' names can vanish like that."

"My word in spells, it is truth," Koya said, the echo of spell under her voice. Speaking something in spell about yourself generally made it true – so speaking something on yourself wasn't done unless it was true in the first place.

Yamato fixed her buttons, watching as their ears flicked uncertainly and the fur of their tails puffed up, like a cat confronted with something that frightened it but wouldn't make it back away.

"We'll take you to Nagisa-sensei's lab," Youji said. "But if anyone else catches you down there, we aren't going to help you."

"We can take care of ourselves," Yamato said, smiling. "Tameless thought we would fail without our name, too. We showed them better."

The other pair turned away quickly, leading them down the steps. The fur on their tails still stood on end. Yamato wondered if it was because of the names, or because of the memory of Koya's swap spell, of what she was capable of. Maybe it was both, put together, that unsettled Zero now.

Either way, it didn't matter.

Goura's streets were deserted after dark apart from the advanced students' practical lessons. Yamato hoped that having so many pairs in the area would help mask Koya's aura, but she was afraid it was distinctive enough to stand out. Nagisa-sensei was neither Fighter nor Sacrifice, so she could not sense them coming – but Ritsu of Seven Voices could, and some of the instructors probably could as well. Whether or not Ritsu would tell Nagisa-sensei of her two wayward creations returning home remained to be seen.

Yamato reached out for Koya's hand and took it as they approached Nagisa-sensei's house, with the lab looming in the background. Natsuo and Youji led them around the edges of the property to the lab's back doors, but Yamato still felt a hard shudder go through her Fighter.

The door opened with a touch of Youji's fingerprint to the scanner. It would stand to reason that Nagisa-sensei's favorite would have access here, Yamato supposed. Youji turned to the two of them. "We won't come with you," he said. "The record room is just a door. You should be able to spell it open."

"If you didn't lie about still being able to," Natsuo taunted as they walked into the lab. "Have fun, Grandmother!"

He shut the door behind him.

They were alone.

The lab was dark at this hour, but emergency lights in the ceiling gave them enough to go by. Yamato remembered these hallways, the sterility of them, the rooms in the back where she had trained with a stand-in Fighter until Koya was brought to her. Koya had never spoken of her time here alone, and Yamato hadn't asked, but she could sense that her Fighter's mental state was fragile at best.

She pulled Koya over to the wall, pinning her up against it and dragging her tongue up the side of Koya's neck, pressing her lips to the hollow under Koya's ear, breathing in her scent and letting Koya do the same. "Steady," she whispered.

"Nothing can move me," Koya whispered back. And if there was no undercurrent of spell beneath it, Yamato could still feel the strengthening effect it had on both of them.

They moved on.

It seemed like the hallways were all the same, like they had been wandering forever. The complex wasn't large in square feet, but it had basement levels, and two floors above the ground floor. It was a good deal to search, with the chance they would be discovered at any moment.

When they finally found the room labeled 'records,' Yamato let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding when she found that Youji hadn't lied – it was a simple door lock. No keypads, no thumprint recognition. Koya could talk this one open in seconds.

"There is no lock here," Koya said blandly. "Nothing that will stop us." The lock opened obediently with a quiet click.

Yamato pushed the door open and felt a chill go down her spine.

"I thought someone was here," a voice said behind her, and she turned, feeling Koya tense beside her. "Who is this poking around Nagisa-sensei's lab at night?"

The pair in front of them had the same careless stance as Natsuo and Youji had adopted, but they were older than even Koya and Yamato. They were both male, both without their ears, and both built whipcord thin. In fact, the more Yamato looked the more she became convinced that there were no differences between them at all.

"Koya," she said lightly. "Why didn't you tell me there was another Fighter here?"

"Too many presences from the school," Koya answered. "I couldn't sense them until they were right on top of us."

Yamato's smile went frigid. The very thing she had hoped would shield them from discovery had backfired, putting them right into the enemy's hands.

"Are you Zero?" she asked. At this point she wouldn't be surprised to discover a legion of Zero.

"Us?" The one who spoke looked surprised. "No. The two brats in the house, they're Zero. And-" his eyes narrowed. "And so are you. I know your faces from your files."

"We were Zero," Koya stressed, her hands curling loosely at her sides.

The Sacrifice still hadn't spoken, and it was the Fighter who said, "Ah, well, you are the prototype."

"Prototype?" Yamato asked. "We were the first?"

"Now, now," he said. "If you want to know more, you'll have to beat us. We are Faultless, and we challenge you to a spell battle."

"We accept," Koya said, and Yamato felt the system expand to encompass the area around them, lighting up the dark walls of the lab negative-bright.

Faultless, Yamato thought, turning the word over in her mind. It prickled against her senses – there was a lot of power in that name, even if the meaning escaped her. They would have to tread carefully.

"Congratulations, Zero," the Fighter said. "We haven't fought in a long time. Meji doesn't like it." He nodded at his still-silent Sacrifice, taking his hands and rolling up his sleeves, before doing his own.

"Does your Sacrifice not speak?" Yamato asked. "Hard for him to direct you, then."

"Meji? He doesn't need to speak." He smirked. "We're twins."

Yamato felt a hard shiver course through her. Pairs who were twins were rare as pure diamonds, and just as strong. No wonder the echo of power she felt rolling off the Faultless Fighter put the hairs on her neck on end.

"Koya, it's rude to keep them waiting. They did challenge, after all."

"We are not Zero," Koya began, rejecting their old name by spell for the first time. Yamato felt a tension in her snap abruptly, leaving her looser. "We have rejected are name as false, as if it had never been. We are connected truly, our power holds us truly. We are Fighter and Sacrifice. We are one."

The power that curled around them made Yamato's nerves sing stirred her hair and pulled at her clothes. She was better braced for it this time than she had been before, when they declared it for Tameless, but the force of it still left her gasping.

The other Fighter nodded slowly. "You've made the best of it, I see," he said, and launched his own invocation. "We are Faultless. We are perfection. From the beginning, we were together. At the end, we will be together. Our connection is unbreakable, unbendable. We cannot fail." Their name appeared on the insides of their arms.

Meji tilted his head back as the rush of power moved over him, whipping up even stronger than Koya's had. They were older, more experienced.

It didn't matter. Koya was better.

"Crush," Koya snapped, making her attack as soon as the crest of their power had passed. "Beneath the force of the ocean. No air, no light. Crushing black depths."

It was a vicious spell to begin with, as water swirled around Yamato's ankles and the dark, terrible wave rose before them and bore down on Faultless. But-

"I see no wave," Faultless said simply. "It is not really there."

Yamato's heart jumped into her throat as their spell vanished like it had never been. Her feet were even dry. She heard Koya suck in a breath beside her and reached out to grip her elbow. "Don't let him shake you."

But Koya hadn't gasped out of fright. She had breathed in to speak. "Of course you don't see it. It's behind you."

The wave reappeared abruptly and Yamato saw Meji jerk before it pounded over the both of them, robbing Faultless of his ability to speak and neatly restricting Meji's throat.

"Clever," Faultless said, smiling without humor. His eyes, which had been sparkling with vague amusement, had gone flat.

"Koya-" Yamato began to say, but the warning came too late. Faultless was already casting.

"How is it you can even fight? Your bond is so brittle it is made of ice. How tenuous it holds, with just a nudge, a mere touch – you Break Apart."

The pain drove her to her knees – worse than when they fought Tameless, worse even than Loveless – Tameless had sought to pull them apart, Loveless had ripped a piece of them away, but Faultless-

"Koya," she gasped, feeling the weight of chain around her throat, squeezing her air away. "Koya, declare it again."

"You speak lies," Koya said, but her voice trembled.

"Do I?" Faultless said, the same undercurrent of cold viciousness in his words. Yamato squeezed Koya's hand hard, digging her fingernails into the delicate skin of her wrist. Koya flinched, stared down at her, and then gripped Yamato's wrists and hauled her to her feet.

"Our connection is strong," Koya said. "We as solid and unbreakable as you-" Yamato shook her head and Koya revised as if they were the ones who could speak without words. "No, we are stronger. We have weathered things your mute Sacrifice cannot even imagine. We have been tempered in flame – let it temper you. Ignite!"

Fire erupted around them. It was one of Koya's oldest spells, a word as familiar to her as Yamato's own name.

"We still have water here," Faultless said, sounding amused. "How can we burn if we are damp?"

"Then Scald, like a foolish animal in the geyser's steam. It will cook you alive."

"We stand aloof," Faultless said quickly. "You cannot touch us."

They stared at each other for a moment – they had matching restrictions, but Faultless seemed unshaken, and Yamato knew that Koya's confidence was not what it should be after the second near-break of their bond. And she had yet to feel the burning, branding sensation that meant something was appearing where her name had once been.

She tilted her head, watching Meji. Her own restriction squeezed so hard she could feel a trickle of blood slipping down her throat, and Meji's, she knew, should feel like drowning. But he stood just as straight as he had at the beginning of the battle, just as silent – just as blank.

"Koya," she said, her voice sounding strange through the restriction. "I don't think his Sacrifice is... all there."

"How dare you," Faultless hissed.

Koya picked up on the weakness immediately. "Meji," she said, rolling the name over on her tongue. "You must love your brother very much, to let him hurt you like this."

Meji jerked, staring at her, confused. "He cannot hear those words," Faultless said.

"Why?" Yamato asked, pulling his attention to her. "Is he deaf?"

"Of course he's not-"

"Then you can hear me, can't you Meji? Why don't you speak? A Fighter is nothing without the direction of their Sacrifice. I am nothing without my Yamato. Is your brother nothing without you, or are you nothing without him?" Koya's voice had gone soft, persuasive.

"Both, we are both, we are one being!" Faultless shouted. But Meji's posture was loosening, like he was waking up. Faultless turned to take Meji's face in his hands. "Meji should listen to brother. Brother watches out for Meji. Meji is Brother's Sacrifice."

"What a strong spell he's cast over you," Koya said, finally figuring it out for what it was. Faultless had his own Sacrifice under a spell of compulsion. "Meji, I would never cast a spell on my Yamato. I am her Fighter. Your brother is your Fighter. He should defend you, not attack you."

"I protect you!" Faultless said desperately.

Meji blinked twice, the blankness receding from his eyes, and looked his Fighter full in the face, staring at him. "Mori," he said slowly, his voice scratchy. "I don't think I want to sleep anymore."

Yamato shivered as the entire system wavered around them. Faultless's synchronization had been radically altered with the breaking of Mori's spell. "Now," she said.

"Break," Koya said, the earlier softness in her voice gone entirely. "I have found the crack in your perfection, the split in your whole, your fault, Faultless. I drive a wedge there. I split you in two."

The entire system shattered around them, Mori wavering and falling as if he were the Sacrifice taking the damage. Meji went white, staggering back, staring down at his twin. "You- you spelled me," he said, his voice thick with horror.

"I had to – I had to," Mori said, reaching out to him. "You hated it, you hated the way I fought, you hated when I hurt them – but Meji, Meji, you can't win unless you hurt them."

Meji shook his head hard, backing up another step. "I didn't want to win," he said. "How can I trust you?"

Mori crumpled like it had been a physical blow. Yamato watched, impassive, her grip tight on Koya's elbow. It was a horrible thing, what Mori had done to his own Sacrifice – to his twin, no less. No wonder, for all their power, Koya had been able to strike hits. Mori had practically been fighting on auto.

"Sleep," Koya said, and Yamato watched the spell catch Mori wholly unprepared, watched him relax into unconsciousness. "That is a cruel thing to say to your Fighter," she said.

Yamato whipped her head around to stare. "Koya-"

"No matter what he has done, he is your Fighter. He is your responsibility. He is under your control. If he has done this, it is to you to correct him."

Meji stared at her. "How can I-"

"He is your Fighter," she said simply.

Meji turned slowly, to regard his unconscious twin, and then scooped Mori up into his grasp. "Did he promise you a prize?"

"Only information," Yamato said. Her voice was steady, though she couldn't understand how Koya could be so dispassionate about such a vile thing. It was almost as bad as Beloved and Loveless, being paired with different names. "He said we were the Zero prototype. He said it didn't surprise him that we didn't call ourselves Zero anymore."

Meji paused, looking past them into the records room. "Nagisa-sensei's records can tell you more than I can," he said. "The filing cabinets would be best. The computers are password protected, I wouldn't know how to get in. You have until morning before the researchers will arrive."

Koya nodded to him and turned to go.

"Thank you," Meji said.

Koya looked back at him over her shoulder, Yamato standing at her side. Her face was entirely blank of emotion. "I fight to win," she said simply. "It was a weakness. I exploited it. It's foolishness to thank me."

Meji stood uncertainly for a moment, but in the end he only bowed awkwardly and walked back down the hallway.

Yamato turned to her Fighter suddenly. "You could forgive him for that?" she asked.

"Not for the spell," Koya said. "He fought to win, at all costs. His Sacrifice was holding him back, so he took control." She met Yamato's eyes directly. "It's the kind of thing Nagisa-sensei would order."

Yamato shuddered. She knew it was true. Nagisa-sensei's words echoed in Yamato's own mind. If you become a burden, we'll have to find a new Sacrifice.

"Come on," Koya said, pressing a kiss to her cheek. "There are a lot of cabinets, and we only have until dawn to search them." She turned and entered the file room, moving to the nearest one.

Yamato stood at the door, staring down the hallway after Faultless.

"Thank you."

She shook it off. They had more important work to do.

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