Ryuuga was thinking.

Normally there was more white noise in the background of Sentou's universe. Normally Banjou Ryuuga was a creature of incessant motion. He fidgeted with the hems of his clothing. He mussed up his own hair, pulling his braids apart and rebraiding them into new styles. He found something in the area to toy with, almost broke it, put it carefully aside, found something new. But it had been more than thirty minutes since Sentou had even heard him twitch. Which meant Ryuuga was thinking. And for an idiot like him, thinking was dangerous.

Sentou lifted his eyes from his book. Ryuuga had seated himself in the rocking chair beneath the window. He sat with his chin in hand, one foot kicked up against the siderail of the bed, staring out the scratched glass at the blank face of the building across the street. The sky was overcast, shading the entire scene a color like charcoal scribbled across a crumpled sheet of paper, and even the wan light of the halogen lamp did nothing to chase it away. Its thin, yellowish glow seemed to deepen the shadows around Ryuuga into something darker. And maybe Sentou was thinking too hard, himself. Maybe the two of them just needed rest.

"Banjou."

Ryuuga jumped. Sentou felt his lips quirk as he turned, the startled light in his eyes fading quickly into annoyance. "What?"

"Stop moping. It's bad for your skin. And you're going to knock that chair over if you lean back any more."

Ryuuga glowered at him. Sentou drummed his fingers against the cover of his book, waiting for the inevitable retort. But Ryuuga's expression ebbed from irritation back into…something unreadable. He turned back to face the window, resting his cheek against his fist, and something cold and hard settled in the pit of Sentou's stomach.

Slowly he inched towards the edge of the mattress. If Ryuuga noticed the movement, he didn't react, even as Sentou slid his legs over the edge of the bed and stretched one out towards the chair. Even when his toe bumped lightly against the stretcher. Not until Sentou gave it a good push and sent the entire chair teetering backwards on its rockers. Only then did Ryuuga yelp, scrambling to his feet so quickly that the whole thing toppled over sideways and clattered to the ground.

"What the hell was that for?!" Ryuuga leapt at Sentou and caught him by the front of the shirt, nearly dragging him up to his feet. "You want me to crack my skull open?!"

"How else am I supposed to figure out what's going on in there?" Sentou retorted. He extricated himself from Ryuuga's grip and brushed at his shirt, frowning at the wrinkles left in the fabric. "It's not like asking does any good. You keep ignoring me."

Ryuuga righted the rocking chair and threw himself back down into it. "You haven't even said anything," he grumbled, folding his arms.

Sentou arched his eyebrows high enough that he was sure they must be disappearing into his hairline. "I haven't, huh? So I was just imagining it when I walked in here an hour ago and tried to ask you how your day was? Or ten minutes later when I asked again? Or about two minutes ago when I started actively trying to annoy you?"

Ryuuga muttered something under his breath and looked away. Sentou leaned closer and cupped a hand around his ear. "Sorry, what was that? I couldn't hear you over the sound of you being grumpy."

"I said I'm just thinking!" Ryuuga snapped. "You're not the only one who's allowed to think about stuff!"

"Sure I am." Sentou jabbed a finger at Ryuuga's forehead. "When you think too hard, you start doing stupid things. Like running off on your own and getting yourself hurt for somebody else's sake, when you could have just asked for help."

Ryuuga rolled his eyes and swiped at Sentou's hand. "Like you're any better."

Sentou pulled his arm out of the way, easily avoiding the strike, and then poked Ryuuga between the eyes. "You're right. I'm not. But at least I'm self-aware about it. So how about instead of just wallowing in your own internal monologue, you tell me what's going on, and we both think about it together for once?"

Ryuuga's entire face scrunched up in thought. Sentou had to fight down a laugh—this really wasn't a funny situation. But he could practically see the gears struggling to turn inside of Ryuuga's head. He looked like a puppy who had just been given a brand new toy and wasn't quite sure what he thought about it yet. Any minute now he was either going to flounce off in a huff or pounce on it and rip it to shreds. Which one would it be this time?

"I really am supposed to be dead, huh?"

Sentou's face and chest went cold. He took a reflexive step backwards, the humor draining right out of him along with the warmth. Ryuuga stared at some nebulous middle point between the two of them, not quite meeting his eyes, and suddenly that chilly weight was back, pushing down lower and lower in his stomach until he was sure it would drag him to the floor.

"What?"

"You heard me." Ryuuga's expression was stony again. "It's…what's that word Misora likes? From that stupid movie? Inconceivable. It's damn near inconceivable that I'm even alive right now."

"The Princess Bride is not a stupid movie," Sentou heard himself say, as though from the other end of a tunnel.

Ryuuga shot him another irritated look. It was enough of a shift in expression that Sentou felt the ice in his ribs crack, enough to breathe in without feeling like he might choke. "It's a good movie, but it's pretty stupid. Look, don't be a jerk. If you want me to talk, shut up and let me talk, alright?"

Sentou's jaw clicked shut. Ryuuga propped his elbows against his knees and clasped his hands in front of his face, and it was only now that Sentou realized they were beginning to shake.

"I keep going over it in my head, y'know?" Ryuuga laughed, a small, hollow thing that echoed dully in Sentou's ears. "Over and over. There's about a hundred different ways I should've never made it." He held out a hand and began to tick them off, and Sentou felt that weight sink lower and lower with each one. "Katsuragi Takumi wanted me dead. Evolt wanted me dead. Hell, your dad probably wanted me dead. That's at least three people way smarter than I'll ever be who were after me. How the hell did I survive odds like that?"

"You had me," Sentou said weakly.

Ryuuga's hands curled into taut, trembling fists. "And what if I hadn't had you?" he asked, his voice fraying just a little around the edges. "If Evolt had left Takumi alone, Takumi would have hunted me down and executed me to save the world, and I'd be dead. If Evolt had just straight up killed Takumi without turning him into a new person and still gotten me locked up for it, I probably still would've escaped, but I wouldn't have had anywhere to go, and Evolt would have found me eventually, and I'd be dead. If Evolt had made you anyone but you, there's no guarantee whoever else you ended up being would've even cared about me, and I'd be dead."

Sentou's hands clenched so hard his knuckles cracked. "Banjou—"

"No, listen!" Ryuuga slammed his hands flat against the arms of the rocking chair. He was on his feet in such an abrupt movement that Sentou actually stumbled back in surprise. Ryuuga's chest was heaving now, his voice cracking on every other word. "If you existed but didn't bother to listen to me, you wouldn't have taken me in and given me something I could use to defend myself, and I'd be dead! If you hadn't bothered to try to convince me I was anything but walking garbage, I never would've given a shit about myself, and I never would've been able to stand up for my own damn humanity against Evolt, and I'd be dead! If you hadn't given enough of a fuck about me to come after me every time he ended up taking me anyway, I'd be dead! There's no miracle answer, there's no but-wait-what-if, there's nothing! If you didn't exist and you weren't you, I would be dead!"

"Ryuuga!"

This time it was Ryuuga's turn to step back, startled. He was still having trouble catching his breath. Sentou watched his throat work silently for what could only have been a few seconds, but felt like hours. And then a sharp knock on the bedroom door shattered the silence between them.

The two of them shot looks of panicked challenge at each other. But finally Ryuuga scrubbed at his eyes and pulled the door open to reveal a woman wearing boldly-colored Norse clothing and a deeply concerned expression. "Are you two alright?" she asked, tugging at the end of the long brown braid she had pulled over her shoulder. "I heard something fall and a lot of shouting."

Sentou bumped Ryuuga out of the way with his hip and gave her a warm smile. "It's fine, Chiyoko-san," he said, ignoring the murderous glower Ryuuga shot at him. "Banjou just fell out of the rocking chair, is all."

Chiyoko planted her hands on her hips and frowned—a rather imposing look in her current getup, all furs and amber necklaces and brilliance. "You'd better not break that chair," she said. "If it could survive the last houseguests I had up here, it has to survive you, too, got it?"

"Yeah, okay, we got it," Ryuuga grumbled. Sentou could feel his gaze stabbing into the side of his head, but he kept his expression perfectly pleasant and his eyes forward, aiming as subtle a kick as he could for Ryuuga's shins. Ryuuga didn't react to the impact itself, but he did shuffle a few more steps away from the door, muttering sourly under his breath.

Chiyoko looked between the two of them for a long moment. Then she sighed and turned away, not quite hiding a smile. "Alright. Just be quieter next time, or I'm making you work overtime."

Sentou closed the door behind her with a sharp click. He stood with his hand on the knob for a long moment before finally risking a glance at Ryuuga—who, to his credit, looked equally chagrined.

"Shit," he said.

"Shit," Sentou agreed in a thin, weary voice.

Ryuuga flashed him a watery smile. "Hey," he said. "You can't curse. This is a fucking kids' show."

Sentou wasn't exactly sure why he started grinning. It wasn't funny. The situation was awful, and Ryuuga's damning, cyclical thoughts were awful, and the joke had been awful, and it made no logical sense for him to be overcome with a fit of giggles. But now Ryuuga had started too. And for a few long minutes, there was nothing else except for the ache in his sides, the struggle to breathe, and thinking he had finally calmed down, only to glance at Ryuuga and wind up starting all over again. It wasn't until they'd resorted to leaning against each other just to keep themselves upright that the waves of laughter finally slowed to a faltering, gasping halt.

Ryuuga ran his hands down his face again and exhaled so deeply he seemed to deflate several inches. "Hell," he said. "I'm a mess, man. I just… I panicked. When I first woke up and had no idea where the hell I was. When nobody recognized me. I didn't stop panicking until I ran into you again. I'm probably still kind of panicking. All I could think about was, if I was the one who made it through and you didn't, what the hell was I supposed to do?"

"But that's not what happened." Sentou reached out, hesitated, and hooked his fingers into the elbow of Ryuuga's sleeve. "None of that happened. Maybe it could have. Maybe there are worlds where it did. But not this world."

"What if it had?"

Sentou tugged sharply at Ryuuga's sleeve. "You can't do that," he said, more quietly now. "You can't spend all this time thinking about how things could have gone wrong. They didn't. They won't. It's over, and we're both here, and we're figuring it out. Nothing will change all the crap we had to go through to get here, not for us. But we're here. That has to mean something."

Ryuuga gave him a wry look. "Yeah? Like what?"

Sentou snorted. "Hell if I know," he said with a shrug. "This is probably the part where I say something optimistic and protagonist-y like, 'Isn't that the greatest experiment yet? Let's go find out together!'"

Ryuuga laughed. "I guess you can't be the main character if you don't say crazy, upbeat stuff like that sometimes, huh." His voice had lost the strained, hollow sound it had before, and Sentou smiled, his grip tightening in the fabric of Ryuuga's sleeve.

"And you can't be the idiot sidekick if you aren't skeptical of my crazy optimism," he said, "but who's judging?"

Ryuuga aimed a light punch at his ribs. "Hey, how about you shut up?"

"But talking is way more fun."

"Says who?"

"Says the resident genius who saved the world."

"Hey, I helped!"

"Barely."

Some distant part of Sentou noted that maybe moving forward, it wasn't a great idea to taunt someone who could easily pick him up off the floor and chuck him across the room onto the bed. But he was laughing again, and Ryuuga was laughing, and hell, maybe that was all they really needed, for the moment. It wasn't really okay, not yet. But they could laugh. It was as good a place to start as any.