Disclaimer: --; shut up.

Warnings: Sap, angst, sap, melodrama…--;;; yeah. That's about it.

Notes: Hiiiiiiiiiiiiii, guys! **wavewave** Whazzaaaaaaaaaaaaap? Rob Lowe is leaving West Wing for salary issues!!……..well, that's what my brother announced directly after I typed "whazzaaaaaaaaap," so therefore…that's what's up!!! ^^;;; Sure. Yeah, Mouse-chan; whatever. Been out in the woods for a month and a half and ya start going mad! Mad, I say!!!! And speaking of mad, here's the psycho story!!!

(Ne, Ryuen…don't lose too much eye juice over this one. :P :P :P )

BLACKBIRD

~~*~~

Chapter Seven:

The Solution

Myojuan was seriously considering buying a satellite dish.

Of course, he didn't indulge in brainless television very often. When he did, however, it was a necessity, a mindless void he could take solace in if ever the world was taunting him. And the world was most certainly taunting him. What with Ryuuen and Chichiri and his own suspended belief, he figured he must have done something pretty awful.

If only I had Animal Planet, he thought wistfully, believing that a little Steve Irwin would do him a world of good just then. But alas, it was not to be, as the gods had shut down his accidental free cable over a month ago. He couldn't help but feel a bit betrayed.

The story Ryuuen had told, of his pre-incarnation adventures in the Magical Land of Oz: China, had lasted well into the night. It was a tale of friendship, deceit, love—Houjun was not the Emperor, as it turned out—hate, destiny, magic…the good stuff, the like of which could only be found in fantasy novels and Japanese cartoons. The boy's small face had been trapped in his story; he had laughed and cried at the anecdotes he related, most of which concerned himself and a person named Tasuki who was apparently rather tactless.

"He was always so tough and even a little cynical," Ryuuen had said, a new sheen of tears hovering over his eyes as he smiled. "But in spite of it all…he really cared about all of us. Not that he'd ever admit it." And Houjun had smiled, too, looking with unfocused eyes at the past. Or, what he believed to be the past.

One story had touched the big doctor's heart, touched it above the others. One of the seven warriors had been a man named Mitsukake, who had lost his beloved to a strange disease; he had been a doctor, and when she had fallen ill, he'd been elsewhere, helping someone else. The bitter irony of it all tugged at Myojuan, made his chest ache somehow, with no reason. Perhaps it was the sadness in Ryuuen's little voice as he related the tale, or the way that the boy had kept his head tilted down, eyes lowered, obviously drawn into his emotions. That had to be it: he hated to see Ryuuen sad, and that story, above the others, seemed to have had an especially poignant effect on him.

He couldn't begin to explain why, since Mitsukake otherwise seemed to be pretty darn boring. He'd let the sadness of his girlfriend's death completely overshadow his life, denying himself happiness; if the man were one of his patients, Myojuan would give him a good shaking and tell him to get over it, for crying out loud!

Myojuan. Get a grip. Recall your mind from whatever planet it has decided to visit. You're thinking about him as if he were a real person, with real problems! He. Is. NOT. REAL. He's a character in a fantasy. A child's fantasy. It's not real…how COULD it be real?

Glancing over at the kitchen table far, far away, he let his gaze rest on the pile of worn notebooks that had burdened him all the way from his office to his car. He'd know soon enough, he supposed, if the story was a fantasy or…or…

The look in his eyes, in both their eyes…They don't look like they're insane. That woman with the spoons, she had a wildness to her eyes that Ryuuen and Houjun don't have…

Thankfully, Tama interrupted the burning worries before they could become too severe, curling his body around Myojuan's left leg and purring, leaving a nice little trail of cat hair on the dark slacks. The doctor absently reached down to scratch his little friend behind the ears, sighing. Houjun's notebooks would take him a long time to read, longer even than it had taken Ryuuen to speak aloud, because Ryuuen's "memories…" they stopped abruptly, about half-way through the adventure, according to the older patient.

Stopped abruptly. Too abruptly. And hauntingly so.

"I didn't…I didn't mean for it to happen," Ryuuen had said, his voice shaking beyond his control. Houjun's reaction to the tearful apology had been to immediately grab Ryuuen, almost roughly, by the shoulders, pulling the smaller body toward him. A trembling hand had pressed the violet head against his neck, the other arm latching tightly around the boy's slender back. Ryuuen's eyes were closed, his eyebrows drawn together firmly, as if fighting tears…but the battle was lost, and twin streams of silver seeped out from beneath his lashes.

For a while, there had been only the sound of labored breathing. Then, in a choked, thick voice, Houjun had broken the relative silence: "None of us did, Nuri-chan… No one could have foreseen that happening. Not to you. Not to you."

And Myojuan had felt tears rising in his own eyes, for he understood, somehow. He didn't know how. But he understood Houjun's outburst; he understood why Ryuuen's story had to end before it was resolved.

The child had died.

He sighed again, running a hand through his short, black hair and tilting his head back to rest against the sofa. For some reason, he pictured Ryuuen dying on a mountaintop somewhere, cold, covered with blood and snow…but he'd read the truth soon enough, whenever he worked up the willpower to collect the volumes from the kitchen. Freddie had not argued when he had asked to be the first to read them, but Myojuan still felt a bit guilty, being as it was that Houjun was Freddie's patient. But it was Ryuuen's sanity at stake, Ryuuen, for whom he had come to care like a son in just a few short days. For Ryuuen's sake, despite the overwhelming effect it might have on his doctor's own sanity, Myojuan almost hoped that the fantasy was real.

He wondered what would happen if it wasn't.

I should get started. It's not getting any earlier, he told himself.

Instead of doing so, however, he allowed his mind to bring him back to the end of Ryuuen's story, when the hospital was close to closing and the time had finally come to separate the boy and his companion. Ryuuen hadn't wanted to leave Houjun's side, not even for a moment, and again had wrapped both of his pale arms around one of Houjun's and looked at his jailers with panicked violet eyes…

___

"Can't we…can't we stay together? Please, can't we?"

Myojuan and Freddie shared a helpless look, and Houjun, probably well aware of the rules, simply rubbed Ryuuen's shoulder without saying a word, trying to comfort him. It had been a long session; all four of the participants were weary, the signs of which were visible beneath four sets of eyes.

"It, ahhh…it's…" Freddie finally said, and sighed despondently, looking near to tears himself. "It's against the rules, you know. Sharing. Er…sharing bedrooms, that is, patients sharing bedrooms… Isn't it, Myojuan?" The Englishman shot his coworker a desperate smile.

The bigger man nodded slowly. "I'm afraid so," he said gently. "It's against hospital regulations, especially since one of you has been confined to solitary." Houjun's eyes fell in a glimmer of embarrassment, and Myojuan ached for him; he opened his mouth to say something else, but nothing seemed to matter. If it had been up to him, then by all means, the two young men who seemed to draw so much from each other could remain together, for as long as possible.

"It'll be all right, you know," Houjun said soothingly, covering Ryuuen's small, clinging hands with his own and stroking lightly with his thumb. "What's another night, after all, when we've lived so long without reunion?" With a smile that Myojuan suspected was mostly for show, he wiped at the boy's eyes with his sleeve. "I'm not leaving. I'll still be here in the morning."

Ryuuen shook his head sadly. "What if it's not real? What if I'm dreaming, and I never found you, after all? I don't wanna go to sleep, Chichiri; I'm afraid to, if I do it might wreck everything…"

Yet again, Houjun drew the nearly frantic boy into his arms, hushing him. "I'll tell you a secret," he said quietly, after a short while. "I'm a little scared, too." Ryuuen gave a little whimper and moved his arms up the other patient's back to squeeze him more tightly; the blue-haired young man quickly placed a hand on the trembling back to calm him. "Shh. I'll tell you another secret. As many times as I've dreamed about finding one of us again…as many times as I've woken up to find myself alone again…I honestly, truly believe that this time, it's for good. It feels different, doesn't it? Different than just a dream. Different in your heart."

Sniffling, Ryuuen nodded against the older man's cheek. Houjun patted him once on the back before gently drawing away, leaning back so he could look the boy in the eye.

"I promise," he stated clearly, softly. "I promise, I'm not going to leave; I'm not going to fade away. When you come to our session tomorrow, I'll be right there. I promise. Okay?"

Ryuuen hesitated before nodding, but the reassurance did not stop his tears from falling, and he wrapped his arms around Houjun's neck once more. And before Myojuan's vision, there came a sudden flash of white.

He drew back sharply with a gasp of surprise as the thing attacked him, blinking in order to focus…and when he did, he discovered that what he'd believed to be some sort of small, white, nose-eating demon was, in fact, a handkerchief. A few subsequent moments were spent blinking at the thing before Myojuan turned his head toward Freddie, who, as it turned out, was the one holding it. The English doctor's face was a mask of innocence, peering up at Myojuan expectantly; with a start, the big doctor realized that he was, indeed, crying, and had every need of a handkerchief such as the offered specimen. Freddie, however, coughed into his fist and turned his face away discretely, perhaps in order to save his friend from embarrassment. Rolling his (now reddened) eyes, Myojuan finally accepted the white piece of cloth, whereupon Freddie finally lowered his arm.

"Thank you," Myojuan said pointedly, perhaps a little more firmly than he should have. But Freddie just smiled his mad little Englishman smile, and told him to keep the handkerchief.

___

They had finally been able to separate the two patients, and Myojuan had walked a worried, fretting Ryuuen back to his own room. With a word of goodnight and another reassurance on the doctor's part, earning him a small, uncertain smile from the boy, he was off to the staff cafeteria to meet with Freddie about the situation and the notebooks. And now, here he was, avoiding the very papers he had begged for in favor of syndicated episodes of Wheel of Fortune.

If only he had R-S-T-L-N-E, he thought philosophically, maybe he'd have been able to make more sense of the situation.

I REALLY should take a look at those books…

Famous last words, as usual, for no sooner had the urgent, nagging thought graced his mind than he fell into an exhausted sleep, the Wheel of Fortune itself spinning round and round in his head.

//*\\*//*\\*//*\\*//*\\*//*\\*//*\\*//*\\*//*\\*//*\\*//*\\*//*\\*//*\\*//*\\*//*\\*//*\\*//*\\*//*\\

Something was…licking him.

Myojuan scrunched up his face in his half-awake state, bringing up a hand to swat whatever it was away. His molester purred, unimpeded, and responded by curling itself around the doctor's head. A mouthful of fur was enough to send him fully into the tangible world, and he sat up slowly, trying to extract the hairball from his tongue.

He peered around at his small den—the television still at large, having switched to an early morning talk shows about young men falling in love with their stepmothers' goldfish, or whatever—and scratched his head. It generally took him a few long minutes to really wake up, but when he did, the recollection of what he had been supposed to do the night before was enough to send his head back down to the couch, a moan escaping his lips.

Ahh, you unprofessional excuse for a psychiatrist…are you so frightened of reading those things that your subconscious has decided to prevent you from doing so??! He had always been diligent with his work, especially important work like this. Why did he have to choose this patient, the only one in years he'd truly cared for, with whom to slack off?

Well, there was no helping it now. He had to get going.

He showered and breakfasted in record time, grabbing his briefcase and Houjun's journals and heading out to his car. Attempting to ignore the fact that he was becoming a definite hazard to the health of everyone on the road between his home and Bentley Park, he tried desperately to read at the wheel.

They say I'm crazy, it began, the handwriting crooked and apparently hasty, as if Houjun had written it in some sort of craze. They say I'm crazy because I know things they do not, because I remember things they do not. But what I know is too vivid to be just a dream, too real to be false. I remember my pain, my thoughts, my every move and word as if Houjun were just another name, and I never really stopped being Chichiri at all…

"GET OFF THE ROAD, YA MORON!!" HONK!!! HOOOONNNNNNNNK!!!

Yanking himself back into the present, Myojuan pulled hard over on the steering wheel, narrowly avoiding a collision with a passing Ford Windstar. Swearing genteelly under his breath, he gave himself a few moments until the adrenaline had flown its course through his body. So much for that idea. Hadn't he yelled at people for similar actions? Talking on the cell phone or eating a sandwich while driving?

I've joined the Dark Side.

So, reluctantly, he set the books aside until he had safely pulled into the parking lot of the hospital. Once he had entered, he attempted to read, walk, and carry his things at the same time, but this, too, proved unsuccessful, and he had to stop about every three minutes to stop his armful of papers from slipping to the ground.

"Can I help you with that, Dr. Yamada?" came a kind voice at his side. After maneuvering around the pile of notebooks in his arms, he discovered that it was Ruth, the nurse that usually took charge of Ryuuen and the other patients on his wing.

"Ah, no, thank you, Ruth. I think I can make it," he lied.

She gave him a skeptical look, smiling at him, but shrugged. "If you say so. You'd better hurry. Dr. Barrington said to tell you he's already started your session, for…the interest of the patients? He said he didn't think you'd mind."

Of course he didn't mind. He would have hated for Ryuuen to have been alone in his room for hours, wondering if the previous day had been a dream. "No, I don't mind. Thank you."

"Ryuuen seemed very excited this morning; he kept asking over and over again when you were coming, even though I told him that it would be the normal time." Her smile deepened, and she shook her head. "He's changed so much since you got here, Dr. Yamada. I'm so happy you were able to help him."

Me, too. "I don't know what I did that would have differed from what any licensed therapist would do," Myojuan told her, modestly and truthfully.

"Well, you must have the golden touch," Ruth said, winking at him before turning down a different corridor, off to do whatever it was she had to do. "Good luck today, Doctor!"

He headed toward Houjun's room, wondering why Ryuuen had been excited, his shame at not having done his research dissipating a bit. Maybe…ah, yes! Maybe they could read it out loud, together! That would save time, and he and Freddie could ask questions, and…hurrah! Problem solved. He felt very pleased with himself.

He'd barely knocked on Houjun's door when it was flung open, nearly sending his papers flying again, to reveal a wide-eyed, beaming Ryuuen. The boy was literally bouncing on his toes, his grin threatening to split his face in two. "Do they have phones here?!" he demanded, speaking a mile a minute.

Myojuan blinked, taking in the hopeful expression. "Yeeeees," he said slowly, "yes, Ryuuen; just like any building built after the turn of the century, we have phones."

His sarcasm was met with giggles. "You're so funny! You didn't used to be so funny; well, I like it. Anyway…" he took a deep breath, and Myojuan wondered if his patient was ever planning on letting him enter the room. "I know what we have to do, I know what'll prove once and for all that we're telling the truth!…Oh, you can come in, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon…" Ryuuen backed away, finally allowing the doctor to step inside and deposit his burden on Houjun's side table. Myojuan shot a questioning look at Freddie, who just shrugged.

"He was keeping his Brilliant Idea a secret until you came," Houjun let him know, mirth in his voice. "Now, finally, we will be enlightened."

The boy bounded over to join his friend on the bed, still bouncing. "Right! Well, okay; there's gotta be one person who remembers what happened, but remembers it from her own life, not from a past one! And if we call her, and she says it's true, then there's no way we could be wrong, because how else would we know her?"

Myojuan blinked, trying to focus. "Wait…wait, Ryuuen. Who are you talking about?"

"Ack, now you're acting like Tasuki!" The violet-haired young man hopped up to stand on the bed, placing a hand on the top of Myojuan's head and teasingly mussing his hair. "Miaka! We have to call Miaka!"

~~*~~

Dans notre maison, fragile et grise,
Nous partageons la rêve de la vie
Et la lune souriait sur l'innocence

(Translation: In our house, fragile and gray,
We share the dream of life
And the moon was smiling upon the innocence)

TBC…

Notes: Woohoo!! Sorry for the absence, but I at least have a little bit of money now with which to buy Nuriko sheets, ne? ^_~ Sorry for the overall melodrama of this chapter, ehehe…but see, what happened was this:

Mouse-chan: Hey, everyone!! Let's play a game!

Cast of FY: ?? uhhh, okay!!

Mouse-chan: The game is called "Let's See How Many People Can Hug Nuriko In A Five-Minute Period!"

All: …

Nuriko: …^_^;;

Tasuki: NO FUCKIN WAY!! I don't hug!!

Mouse-chan: **clears throat, hands him copy of Another Story**

Tasuki: O.O;;;

Nuriko: No, no; it's okay, you guys…**sniff** No one has to hug me, it's okay… really, it's okay, I don't mind…**starts to walk away, head down**

Mouse-chan: NOW look what you've done! Hasn't he suffered enough??!

Ryuen: GO HUG NURIKO!!! NOWWWWW!!!!

Chichiri & Mits: --;; **go over to hug Nuriko**

Nuriko: ^_^n

Ryuen: There. That's better.

Mouse-chan: I know!! Let's play another game!!!

All: **groan**

Mouse-chan: THIS one's called "How Many People Can Mouse-chan Make Cry in Any Given Chapter?"

Chiriko: Whyyyyy, oh lord??!

Mouse-chan: …That's good, but I don't see any moisture there…

Chiriko: --;;;;

Ryuen: Yeah…isn't it, like, a rule in Blackbird?? Someone's always gotta cry. Minimum one person per chapter…

Mouse-chan: Shu'up. --;

Anddddd, the Blackbird Trivia Question of the Day Iiiiiiiiiiisssssssssss:

Q: WHO was driving the car that yelled and honked at Myojuan?!?!?!?!

Give up?

A: FRODO BAGGINS, of course!! D'ya think anyone else can yell "GET OFF THE ROAD!!" with such clarity and grace??? ^_~