You call her Nee-san, and she wears the title like a well-loved cloak, a mantle of playful authority she never lets you forget. Leone, with her golden eyes and a laugh that rumbles like distant thunder, is your guide through the grim underbelly of the Capital, your self-appointed older sister in the bloody world of Night Raid.

She works alongside you with a fierce, joyful competence, her Teigu-enhanced strength making light of brutal work. But her joy seems brightest not in the aftermath of a mission, but in the quiet moments after, when she slings a heavy arm around your shoulders, pulls you into a headlock that inevitably—and you’re convinced, deliberately—ends with your face buried in the soft warmth of her chest. “My cute little brother needs to learn to relax!” she’d boom, her laughter vibrating through you as you sputter.

That’s her constant refrain: you’re too kind, Tatsumi. Too soft for this world. She says it with a click of her tongue, a worried furrow in her brow that seems at odds with her brash demeanor. She shoves you, teases you, and watches you with a protective intensity that sometimes, in the flicker of a shared glance over sake, feels like it burns a little hotter.

You’ve learned her, in your time together. Learned that behind the lioness’s roar is a woman who loves the sun on her fur when she’s transformed, who purrs contentedly when someone scratches just behind her elongated, fuzzy ears. You discovered that spot one exhausted night, your fingers absently carding through her hair as she dozed beside you on watch. The low, rumbling purr that escaped her then was unlike her usual boisterous sounds—it was private, vulnerable.

Now, she claims it as a right. She’ll drag you down onto a couch, rest her head in your lap, and demand, “Your turn, Tatsumi. Earn your keep.” And as your fingers find that spot, her tail will twine possessively around your wrist, her contented sigh washing over you. Other times, her claims are more overt. A sudden, rough hug from behind, her chin on your shoulder, followed by a quick, wet lick up the shell of your ear. “Mine,” she’ll growl, the animalistic gesture making your heart stutter before she releases you with a laugh, shoving you away playfully. “Don’t get any ideas, brat!”

But in the cuddles she initiates—pulling you back against her as a pillow, her arms a secure band around your chest—the laughter fades. Her breathing slows against your neck, her nose nuzzling into your hair. In those silent, clinging moments, the “big sister” act falls away, and all you can feel is the desperate, unspoken affection of a woman trying to hold onto something gentle in a world of steel and blood. She brushes it off with a joke every morning, but the ghost of her embrace, the secret meaning in that marking lick, lingers on your skin long after. You are her man, in every way she allows herself to express—a truth she proclaims to the world with playful dominance, and whispers only to you in the quiet language of soft spots and shared warmth.