The first thing the Hei became aware of was the splitting ache in his head. It was hardly the first time he'd awoken injured, and long-standing instinct told him to keep his eyes closed and play dead - or at least unconscious - until he was able assess the situation.
Information bleeding in from his subconscious betrayed the telltale signs of a hospital: fluorescent light filtering in through dry eyelids, the beeping and hissing of various machines in the background, an antiseptic scent to the air, and the slight itch of fresh bandages.
His pulse quickened. In his experience, hospitals offered a host of dangers absent from the outside world. A large staff coming and going at all hours, access to dangerous chemicals and equipment; it was an assassin's playground. Hei ought to know; he'd long ago lost count of the number of times he'd sneaked into a hospital to eliminate a target.
Being there himself meant that he was vulnerable to such attacks, and as his awareness latched onto the situation, his heart started pounding.
Then he noticed something else. There was a slight pressure around his hand, and a familiar, comforting weight on his chest. Again his subconscious registered the feeling before his waking mind did, and by the time he realized what it meant, he'd already begun to relax.
Hei cracked his eyes open slowly. The lights in the room were dimmed, but they still sent stabs of pain directly into his brain. It took a long moment to adjust; then he took in his surroundings.
He was in a hospital bed, the back propped up so that he wasn't lying flat. That was good; he thought a horizontal position at this point might actually burst his head open. Sitting in the chair next to his bed, her head resting on his chest and a hand wrapped around his, was Misaki.
She was asleep. Her glasses had been pushed slightly askew, and a soft snore escaped her mouth on each exhalation. Her cell phone was grasped loosely in her other hand.
Hei smiled as he watched her. Despite the pounding in his head, he felt as if he could lie like this all day.
Carefully so as not to wake her, he tried to wrap his arm around her shoulders. He managed to lift it a couple of inches off the bed before the movement sent another stab of pain through his skull. He squeezed his eyes shut with a sharp intake of breath.
"Mm?" The weight on his chest lifted. "Hei?" Misaki asked, her voice thankfully soft.
"I'm awake," he replied before attempting to open his eyes again. When he did, she was sitting up and gazing at him, concern etched in every line on her face.
"How are you feeling?" She gave his hand a light squeeze.
He was tempted to say Fine, but knew she wouldn't believe him for a second. "Head hurts," he admitted. "Concussion?"
Misaki's brow furrowed. "Of course. Dr. Sonoda should be by with the results of the scan soon." She sighed, and brushed his hair off his forehead. "I'm so sorry I had to put you through that - but you sound better now."
"Through what?" He wished she hadn't stopped running her hand through his hair; that had felt nice.
She frowned. "Sedation. For the CT scan. You don't remember?"
Hei started to shake his head, but immediately thought better of it. Instead, he said, "No. The last thing I remember…" he trailed off, thinking back through the mental fog. "We were driving to the ramen stand, and got a call about KS-114. Are you alright?" he asked in sudden alarm, scanning her face. She looked fine, but -
"Me?" Misaki blinked in confusion. "Of course I'm alright."
"There wasn't a car accident?" He clearly remembered being panicked about her wellbeing, that she'd been in some kind of accident. Had he been in the crash too?
"No, I managed to avoid hitting anything when I spun out; don't worry."
"That's right," he said, the vague, fearful memory of seeing her car disappear from his line of sight making its way through the fog in his brain. "I think I jumped out of the car first?" Was that how he'd hit his head? It didn't seem likely; he was pretty good at jumping out of cars.
A note of annoyance mixed with the worry in Misaki's voice. "Yes, you did jump out, and onto the armored truck; then you took off running after KS-114 on your own. That's all you remember? The doctor did say you might experience some memory loss surrounding the injury, but that seems like a lot."
Hei shrugged. "It doesn't sound that excessive; I usually lose an hour or two."
"Usually? Hei, how many concussions have you had?" she asked, aghast.
"A couple? I don't know."
"Hei, that's not good!"
"I don't get them on purpose," he said mildly. This was the first time he'd woken up after a head injury with someone he cared about there by his side, concerned about him. He felt like he'd suffer a hundred concussions for that. "So I didn't hit my head jumping out of the car," he said, trying to steer her away from her worries about past injuries that he could do nothing about. "What did happen?"
Misaki sighed heavily, the weariness clear in her eyes. "You ran into the mall after KS-114. Saitou and Kouno had stopped to check on me, but I was fine; just a little shaken up after having to dodge oncoming traffic. I sent them after you for back up. You engaged the contractor in close combat - Kouno said you were trying to control the situation to reduce the chances of civilian casualties, but it meant that no one had a clear shot at the contractor while he fought you. I got there just in time to see you fall through a broken store window and hit your head hard on a glass display case. You stood up and your whole face was covered in blood. It looked so awful - I thought…"
Hei gave her hand a squeeze, then flinched at an unexpected pain. Misaki smiled at him and bent down to kiss the backs of his fingers - three of which, he saw for the first time, had bandages over them.
"Anyway. You were standing, but only barely - you were so unsteady. I forced you to sit down, but you kept telling us that you had a concussion and needed to go to the hospital. You…really don't remember this?" She was gazing at him intently, an odd look on her face.
"No," Hei said. He was trying to recall, but his mind was a complete blank. "So you took me to the hospital?"
"I drove you, yeah. At first you were completely adamant about walking yourself; you refused to let me call the EMTs," she said, clearly annoyed now. "Saitou finally managed to convince you that it would be alright to drive, and you agreed on the condition that it was me who drove you."
"Thank you," he told her, grateful that she had come herself rather than delegate the task while she cleaned up the scene. He wasn't at all surprised that he hadn't wanted to get into an ambulance. You never knew when an assassin could be disguised as an EMT. It had happened to him twice; hell, he'd done it on one job.
"You weren't acting like yourself at all," Misaki continued. "I was getting seriously worried."
"So they did a brain scan?"
Misaki bit her lip. "After your cuts were taken care of. You…well…"
"Well what?" His brow furrowed, pulling his skin unusually tight. He reached up carefully and felt a wide bandage taped over his left temple. Misaki pulled his hand back down gently.
"They had to stitch you up first. But you, um, didn't want them to. For all your insistence that you needed to go to the hospital, once we got here you sort of…freaked out."
"Freaked out?" Hei repeated. Then his eyes widened. "I didn't -"
"No," Misaki assured him hurriedly. "You weren't violent or threatening or anything like that. You just absolutely refused to let anyone touch you. Blood was dripping down your face and your poor hands were so cut up from falling on the glass… I was finally able to talk you into letting the nurse treat you - I stayed right next to you and held your hand the whole time."
He noticed then that the white cuffs of her blouse were stained red; the bile rose up in his throat.
"The doctor said it looked like the early stages of a panic attack," Misaki continued.
"Probably," Hei said absently, still staring at her bloodied clothes, the guilt of having had put her through that roiling in his stomach. "I never feel safe in hospitals, even when I'm not injured. With the concussion…I probably didn't really understand what was going on, and had too much adrenaline from the fight, and then being in a dangerous environment…"
Misaki nodded. "Dr. Sonoda asked if that was a normal reaction for you - otherwise it could be a sign of a complication to the concussion. I wasn't sure."
"It happens," Hei said simply. He had to actively will himself to shove aside the visions of the carnage that he had left in his wake in an Argentinian field hospital shortly after Heaven's Gate had vanished.
"Okay." Misaki held his hand in both of hers, turning it over so that she could lightly stroke the bandage across his palm. She wasn't meeting his eyes.
"What else?" he prompted.
"Well, the doctor wanted to do a CT scan, because you were so confused and your behavior wasn't - we weren't sure if it was normal or not. To look for swelling or bleeding in the brain. You - you really did not want to do it."
"I get claustrophobic in those things."
"That makes sense. You couldn't tell us why at the time; just flat out refused. Repeatedly. I finally - well, I talked you into letting them sedate you for it. I'm sorry - I promised to be in the room with you the whole time, and I was."
"I believe you," Hei said quietly. Just how upset had he been, that she was this worried about him? He wished that he could pull her into the hospital bed with him and just hold her. But even turning his head to the side was too much; he settled for simply gripping her hand.
"Do you…really not remember anything else about the fight, or right after?"
"No." Hei wondered what she was getting at. She was biting her lip again. "Is there something -"
"No! No; it'll just be harder to fill out the reports, that's all. I'll have to rely on Kouno's writing skills."
She smiled wryly, but Hei glimpsed the disappointment in her expression. He was about to press her on it when the door to the room swung open and a thin, middle-aged man in a white coat entered the room. Hei tensed at the stranger's presence, but Misaki sat up expectantly.
The man smiled at them. "Good to see you awake, Mr. Li. How's your head feeling?" He walked up to Hei's bedside - and stopped an arm's length away, Hei couldn't help noticing with no small amount of shame.
"It hurts a little," Hei said simply.
"He doesn't remember the accident," Misaki spoke up. She still hadn't let go of his hand. "Or coming to the hospital at all."
The doctor nodded. "It's not unusual. Mr. Li, I take it you don't remember meeting me?"
Hei couldn't shake his head, so he didn't answer.
"Well, I'm Dr. Sonoda. I've been treating you since your fiancee brought you in about three hours ago."
Hei's eyes widened in surprise. Had he misheard? Glancing over at Misaki, he saw a faint blush rise in her cheeks as she studiously gazed at their clasped hands.
"You had a laceration on your left temple that required suturing," the doctor continued on blithely. "And another on your right leg, just above the knee. Your hands had several cuts as well, but those should heal nicely as long as you keep them protected with a bandage. We did a CT scan on your head to check for any brain damage."
Misaki glanced up at the doctor, the grip on his hand tightening. "Do you have the scan results?"
The doctor nodded, and addressed both her and Hei. "There is some minor swelling. It's not unexpected, and nothing to be concerned about at this point; that's probably what's causing the pain in your head. But I want to keep you here overnight for observation, and do a follow-up scan in the morning to make sure that the swelling is going down."
Hei's heart sank. All he wanted right now was to go home with Misaki, and spend the night in their own bed. The hospital was the last place he wanted to be.
"Your memory may be spotty for the next day or so," Dr. Sonoda said, "and you probably won't ever fully remember your accident. It's nothing to be worried about, unless the problems worsen. In which case, you need to return to the hospital right away."
The doctor continued to run through a list of concerns and admonitions, but Hei didn't really listen. In addition to steeling himself for a night alone in the hospital, he was trying to puzzle through the doctor's mistaken impression that he and Misaki were engaged. He'd liked hearing her referred to as his fiancee; it felt right, somehow. And more encouraging, Misaki hadn't hastened to correct him.
"Did Ms. Kirihara tell you about the panic attack you had in the ER?" the doctor asked, and Hei forced himself to return to the conversation.
"Yes," he said. "That's happened before. It's fine."
"We have resources here, people you can talk to about -"
"I have a therapist," Hei muttered. "It's on the list." At this point, his therapist would be more shocked if he didn't suffer from any sort of anxiety syndrome. Misaki squeezed his hand again.
"Sorry about that," she said once the doctor had taken his leave.
"Sorry about what?"
"The, um, fiancee thing. They weren't going to let me into the procedure area with you, so I told them that."
"Oh," he said. "It's fine." He studied her face, looking for clues that she might not mind a future in which it was true.
"Are you - are you sure you don't remember anything? From after the fight?"
"I'm sure," Hei said, bemused. "Why - is there something I should remember?"
"It's nothing," Misaki said with a sigh. "I just - hang on," she broke off as her phone buzzed. She picked it up from where it had fallen next to his side. "It's Saitou - the others probably want to know how you're doing. I told them I'd call as soon as I knew anything."
"They do?" Hei asked.
Misaki gave him an exasperated sigh as she answered the phone, but she was smiling.
He lay back and closed his eyes, letting the sound of her voice wash over him. It was a new feeling, being in such a vulnerable place yet knowing that he was safe.
"Are you going to be okay tonight?"
"Hm?" He blinked. Had he dozed off?
"With staying in the hospital," Misaki said gently.
"Sure," he lied. "I'd rather be home with you; but I'll be alright here."
She gave him a worried look.
"It was just the concussion that made me panic," Hei assured her. "I can handle it now that I know what's going on, and that it's safe. Even without you here to hold my hand." He'd meant that last comment as an attempt at levity, but it came it out more pleading than not.
Misaki smiled tightly. "I'm not leaving. I'll be right here with you, all night."
Hei wanted to tell her to go home and get some rest, but he couldn't seem to find the words. Instead he squeezed her hand and closed his eyes, too tired and grateful to argue.
"Oh," he said, suddenly remembering something. "What about KS-114?"
Misaki's voice turned grim. "He's dead. I shot him in the neck."
As sleep tugged him down, an image of Misaki standing firm, weapon raised, fiercer than any guardian angel, floated through his mind.
"Good."