Prompts courtesy of the LJ writing community "4purposes," though I'm not registered there (read: fear of commitment). For this one, it was "proof of your transience."

I'm planning to make this a series of four vignettes. This takes place after and is based on events also narrated in my earlier oneshot Transference, though one doesn't need to read the latter in order to understand this post. i.e. approximately 3 years after the end of the series.

Doggedly pounded out between 1:30 and 4 AM while wary of the mother suddenly waking up and discovering that I'm not yet in bed. (Hey, what's vacation for, right??)

Apologies for the dorky title. I hope to come up with a better one soon...

Every Purpose Under Heaven

Autumn: To Keep Silent, and To Speak
by Mirune Keishiko

"—another half-inch to the left and you'd be one leg less. You're lucky it didn't completely shatter the bone either..."

Pitching his voice at just the right note of gruff reproof, Julius Reichwein peered through his spectacles over the sheaf of papers in his hand to find his intended audience listening not at all. Instead, Kenzou Tenma was staring off absent-mindedly—and Reichwein didn't have to look very far to follow the distracted doctor's gaze.

Reichwein set down the medical records and cleared his throat loudly. Tenma started. Near his feet, sprawled out on a checkered picnic blanket beside the remains of their late lunch, the young assistant prosecutor Nina Fortner stirred, then went on sleeping.

The casefiles she had been reading were facedown across her chest where she had dropped them, and rose and fell with every peaceful breath.

"She looks cold," said Tenma—somewhat defensively, noted Reichwein with glee. "It's been terribly chilly these days..."

"Ah, of course." Reichwein rose to his feet. "I'm afraid I didn't bring my jacket, though—"

But already Tenma was shrugging out of his coat, and as Reichwein draped it over their sleeping friend, the younger doctor watched with a look in his dark eyes that said he would have done it instead, if not for the wheelchair to which he was bound for the next six months.

A wind whipped up at that moment, rushing noisily through the trees all around the park, jewel-bright in the reds and oranges of October; Reichwein clutched at the rumpled hat on his head, while Tenma eyed with a distant half-smile the flurries of flaming leaves that drifted all around them. In a dozen shades of amber and ruby they eventually came to rest on grass that fairly glowed with green in contrast.

"I understand that in your country, you get much the same effect with the cherry trees every spring," said Reichwein, walking back to his sun-warmed spot on the grass beside Tenma's wheelchair. As he passed the younger doctor he dropped several fallen leaves into Tenma's lap—fierce red and mottled yellow; they had drifted onto Nina with the breeze, and Reichwein had picked them gently out of her newly cropped blond hair.

Tenma held a single perfect golden leaf up to the sunlight. "It's our national flower, in fact," he said, "the cherry blossom, that is. It blooms fully, then drops off the branch before it even has a chance to wither. Supposedly it symbolizes the old code of the warriors—the ultimate glory was to be killed fighting for one's lord in the prime of one's youth."

"Do you believe so, too?" Peering over the rim of his glasses, Reichwein picked out one red-haired boy playing soccer with several others some distance away. The three of them had initially planned only to watch one of Dieter's practice games with his school teammates, but the weather had been so pleasant they had decided to stay long after the game had ended and Dieter and his friends had struck up a new game with some other local boys.

Tenma had picked up another leaf, larger and honey-colored, and held them both up to the light layered one on top of the other, as if to see whether the sunlight would filter through. Reichwein, watching him, had to smile—the forty-three-year-old doctor looked every bit like a curious child setting up his first experiment.

"I believe"—Tenma paused, cocking his head to the side—"that one dies when one dies, and till then one must live."

Reichwein nodded. "Fully. Freely. Without reservations."

"Yes, of course," said Tenma promptly, almost impatiently, setting down the leaves to gaze up at the clear autumn sky. "Without fear, without doubts—"

"—without a thought for what those who could never understand might say," added Reichwein placidly, linking his fingers behind his head as he lay back against the grass. "After all, one lives, and then one dies—"

Tenma didn't turn to glare at him, but the younger doctor's reproachful tone said it all. "Doctor Reichwein..."

"What, what?" Reichwein chuckled. "Was it something I said?"

Tenma kept a stubborn silence, and Reichwein indulged himself in a huff of laughter. "You young people. So touchy." He sat up and began sorting his friend's medical records neatly back into their folder, pausing a moment to take one last look at several x-rays. "So anyway, I hear you accepted that invitation for a series of guest lectures at the LMU."

"Yes, I figured I might as well do something while I'm on hiatus like this."

Reichwein smiled at the sudden happy note in Tenma's voice. The younger doctor seemed to have completely forgotten his earlier pique at Reichwein's comments. "' On hiatus,' you say—you make it sound as though you're on vacation, not recovering from a serious injury." He shook his head as Tenma gave a little grunt of a laugh. "If you're doing well enough by next term, I'm sure they'll ask you to mentor some of their students, or join in some of their research efforts."

He looked up to see Tenma smile. "I doubt it. I couldn't stay long enough to make any meaningful contribution."

"Going back to the MSF, you mean?" Reichwein sighed. "Tenma, why don't you stay here for a change and teach? You could use the rest. You've put your body under a tremendous amount of strain in the last six years, and you know how much longer it's going to take your leg to heal completely on account of your age and all—"

"Indeed," said Tenma wryly, "on account of my age, Doctor Reichwein."

Reichwein eyed the back of the younger man's head grumpily. Tenma was undoubtedly smiling that sad, dry little smile of his. "My point being"—Reichwein raised his voice slightly, sharply—"that it might be time for you to consider settling down, and spreading around that genius of yours to inflame even more idealistic young minds to work for noble causes like the MSF you love so much, especially if it might possibly give you a bit of happiness. One lives and then one dies, Tenma."

Tenma merely chuckled.

Reichwein knew to quit when he was ahead, so he got to his feet and handed the medical file back to his friend, who accepted it without a word. Reichwein was stooping to awaken Nina when a murmur from Tenma stopped him.

"She never gets enough sleep," said the younger doctor, gazing down at the peacefully dozing young woman, who had snuggled down into the battered brown coat draped over her. "Let's wake her after you tell Dieter that we're going."

Reichwein hid his smile, turned toward the soccer-playing boys across the park from them.

"Let's see what happens, Doctor," called Tenma after him as he started across the field. "I've never actually taught students before in my life, you know."

"Somehow, Tenma," Reichwein called back, pausing and half-turning, no longer bothering to conceal his beaming face, "I have a feeling you'll be very, very good at it."

He stuck his hands in his pockets and grinned broadly as he strode through the grass toward Dieter's soccer game. Perhaps he could get into some long and involved conversation with the boy, tease him about the curly-haired girl who was his teammate and whom he'd brought home for cake and some videogames the other day. It was such a beautiful day, and what with Nina always being so busy at work, even when Tenma came home from his missions, they rarely got to see each other anymore. At this point, any excuse to get the two alone together would do, even if—Reichwein glanced back across the field to find Tenma watching Nina, a soft and thoughtful look on his face—one of them had to be sound asleep at the time, and the other unable to move much closer than a wheelchair's length.

The wind gusted through the trees again, shaking down yet more leaves. Winter would be upon them soon. Reichwein reached the makeshift soccer field, and decided to wait on the sidelines until Dieter noticed him.

tsuzuku

"LMU" is short for the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, or simply the University of Munich, which Wikipedia says is "considered the best in Germany and one of the most prestigious universities in Europe."

Thank you for reading my lowly little piece! I hope it satisfied even just a little bit. Ü