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Six years old is a little too soon to reasonably expect any girl to be capable of doing her own hair, and so, as is the way with everything else, it is Komui's job as the elder brother to pick up the slack when their parents die.
As is the way with everything else, he tries his best.
As is the way with everything else, he can already tell that he is failing miserably.
Lenalee tries to bear with his disastrous attempt of brushing her hair, even though she winces every time he pulls too hard on any tangle the comb snags on and the teeth scrape too hard as he runs the comb over her scalp – too used to wrangling his own messy hair into submission over the years, the idea that combing his sister's hair might require some finesse and a gentler hand eludes him – but at six years of age, her patience can only last so long.
The parting of her hair is done crooked, and since Komui couldn't quite figure out the motions for tying another person's hair right away, her pigtails end up being uneven and unaligned, with stray strands of hair that had slipped out of his grip framing her face.
Frankly, she looks like a total mess, and a quick look into the precious hand mirror their mother had left behind is all it takes for Lenalee to finally reach her melting point.
Hot, angry tears run down her chubby cheeks as she makes her displeasure known through her ear-splitting wails, and Komui tries his best to pacify her.
“I'm sorry,” he babbles, “I'm so sorry, Lenalee, here, please let me try it again, okay – ”
Lenalee slaps away his outstretched hand with all her frail might and screeches.
“No!” She sobs, unconsolable. “No, no, no! You made it hurt and you made me so ugly! Why can't Mommy comb my hair as always? I don't want you, I want Mommy!”
(Six years old is a little too soon to reasonably expect any girl to understand the permanence of death.)
“I'm sorry,” Komui repeats, stuck in a loop as though he's one of his many broken machines, his voice cracking. “I'm sorry, I know, I want her here too, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry– ”
The sight of her brother crying is jarring enough for Lenalee to stop.
“Brother…?” she asks, her voice frail and confused, her small hands reaching for Komui's face, for the glistening silver tears that don't belong there, set on erasing them with her small fingers.
But Komui doesn't give her the chance, his spindly arms wrapping around her and holding her close. With her face pressed into the crook of her brother's shoulder, it doesn't take long for her eyes to tear up again.
“ 'm sorry too,” Lenalee weakly hiccups. “I won't complain anymore, so – ”
“No, I'm sorry,” Komui interrupts, pressing a kiss into Lenalee's messy hair. “There’s no need for you to apologise. I'll do better next time, I promise, and then there'll be no need for you to get cry either.”
Later, there will be no next time, for God will not allow him to keep this promise. But as the two siblings spend most of the morning crying into each other's shoulders, in that instant, they both believe in it, and that much is enough.
Ever since Komui showed up by her bedside, Lenalee cannot keep her eyes off him – she sticks by his side as though she’s his second shadow, ghosting his every footstep at all times. She looks at him as though he is a miracle, as though he might vanish into thin air the second she looks away.
She must make for quite the sight, she is sure, but if her silent hawk-like staring bothers him, he doesn't say anything of it at all, simply pushing away her long, thin bangs away from her face with his long, thin fingers, tucking them behind her ear with a smile.
“It must be hard for you to see anything with your hair falling in your face like that,” he says. “Let me tie it for you. I am sure we can find a comb and some ribbons in this castle.”
He does exactly so, his hand exceedingly gentle as he runs a comb through her hair, and the same way he never mentioned her bloodied fingernails and scratched face and bruising restraints, he doesn't utter a word about how filthy her hair must surely feel under his fingers, how greasy and tangled it has gotten during her confinement, how gross her flaky and itchy scalp is – disobedient little girls didn't have the luxuries of having their hair looked after.
But cherished little sisters do, and the only complaint Komui brings up is about how awfully thin her hair has gotten. He frets and fusses over it, whispering about homemade remedies and special oil blends under his breath the whole time – and he sounds so much like one of the middle aged aunties from their neighborhood instead of her brother in that moment, it nearly startles a laugh out of her.
Perhaps Komui is a miracle, after all. Perhaps this is simply what miracles are made of.
Despite all his best efforts, Komui is still three years out of practice – not that he had gotten much of it in the first place – and the pigtails still come out slightly misaligned in the end.
Lenalee still runs her hands through them with reverence, even as her hair catches in her cracked nails and makes them sting.
Their hand mirror – their mother's precious treasure – is gone, she realises with a numb, distant sadness as she is done checking her reflection in the stained glass of the window – she hasn't been allowed to have a mirror in her room for nearly as long as she can remember. All the windows have been boarded shut from the outside for longer still, but perhaps that will change too, just like the rest of her life has.
“How do I look?” she asks, pushing the sadness away and turning to look at her brother – who is still here, who hasn't disappeared into thin air even after she took her eyes away from him – her breath catching in her throat.
“Like the prettiest girl in the whole world,” Komui earnestly replies, his voice slightly nasal as he aggressively wipes at the tears fogging his glasses and clouding his vision. “That’s my Lenalee.”
Confined to her bed, Lenalee had once believed that she must have run out of tears to shed. As fresh tears stream down her cheeks and make her scratches sting, she finds out that she had been wrong.
When they embrace, Komui’s arms are as welcoming as she remembers, and for the first time in what feels like forever, Lenalee finds herself smiling.
Shedding tears of joy won't take three years worth of pain away, and Komui's presence certainly won't save Lenalee from the chains of her fate – but it just might give her a home to return to once again, and for the two of them, that much is enough.