Chapter nine: Fall

Soubi rushed forward, closing in the last few steps between him and the edge of the roof. Time seemed to move slowly. The rest of the crowd gasped and Foreman ran to the edge with House closely on his heels.

It was quick. Really, it was a matter of seconds, though it felt like hours to the Fighter. Soubi reached forward almost instinctively and felt material slide against his fingertips. Shocked, he closed his fingers around it and felt a dead weight in his hand.

He pulled the dangling mass up and up onto the ledge. It was amazing. He had actually caught Ritsuka. The boy was at first curled into a tight, unmoving ball then suddenly he started screaming and flailing. Soubi had to hold Ritsuka down to keep him from doing anything stupid again.

Meanwhile, House addressed the crowd. "What the hell are you all doing just standing there?!" He yelled, pointing to the stairwell. "One of you idiot doctors get me fifteen grams of a lithium tranquilizer!" Two doctors in the back rushed off, only to return less than two minutes afterward.

Soubi was still struggling with Ritsuka. He was vicious, growling and biting him like some sort of animal. He landing a couple blows on him and sunk his teeth into the man, drawing Soubi's blood.

He looked up to see House standing above the two. "Hold him down," House told him. "Get him flat on his back. You'll have to inject the drug."

"Are you kidding me?!" Soubi got in between trying to keep a very violent Ritsuka from hurting anyone.

"Just do it!"

Soubi managed to glare at him and then fought Ritsuka to the ground. He kicked and scratched at the older male, but Soubi overpowered him by quite a lot. He got on top of him, straddling him.

"Give me the god damn drug!" He shouted as Ritsuka's nails abruptly scratched his face.

House held up the needle and tapped it once to get the medication going. "Stick him hard in the arm. I can only pray to the god that I don't believe in that you know where to inject," He retorted, giving Soubi the needle.

Without hesitation, Soubi thrust the drug into a still struggling Ritsuka's arm and pushed down on the other end. The fluid emptied into Ritsuka's bloodstream, leaving the syringe drained. The teen immediately went limp beneath him. His eyes were closed and he fell into a deep sleep.


The symptoms were adding up. House was frustrated now. What could've induced the psychosis?

"Go," House snapped as he finished writing down the last symptom. There were a good amount of them on the board now.

"Hyperthyroidism," Chase spoke up. "With anemia. It explains most of the symptoms."

"But not the psychosis. Sarcoidosis fits better," Foreman put in, glancing at Thirteen's empty seat beside him.

"Hyperthyroidism is stupid. But you're not completely off. The anemia is a possibility. Foreman, go test for Sarcoidosis. It would explain almost everything. Chase, go do a colonoscopy and check for a drop in hematocrit," House ordered. He limped over to his desk chair and sat down, placing his feet up on the table. He then stared at the long list of symptoms. "And keep him awake," He added to Chase without taking his eyes off the board.


Soubi glanced down at the kitten-like boy in his arms. Ritsuka was asleep, holding tightly onto Soubi's shirt. Every time he or somebody else tried to remove Ritsuka from him the Sacrifice would squirm in his sleep and end up even closer to the other.

Ritsuka was curled up in Soubi's lap, apparently happy and content there. He sighed quietly and his tail swished against the man's legs. Soubi smiled and ran his hands through the child's silky black hair.

"Ritsuka," He whispered quietly. "I hope that was just a hallucination…" Had he really just said that? Of course it had been a delusion! Ritsuka had thought Soubi was his mother for God's sake! There was no way that Ritsuka would actually try to commit suicide!

Suicide…

Suicide…

There that word was. Soubi couldn't hide it from himself anymore. Ritsuka had attempted suicide. He had tried to kill himself. He might've been delirious but it was still an attempt at death.

He would've been dead if Soubi hadn't caught him.

It was purely luck that he had caught him. He hadn't tried hard enough. He could've reasoned Ritsuka into not doing what he had done. He could've prevented it but he hadn't.

Now Soubi sat with Ritsuka on his lap feeling guiltier than ever. He fingered one of Ritsuka's soft cat ears. I must be going crazy, he thought to himself. Was there really a way I could've prevented that?

The drugs had worked well. It took a couple of more hours until Soubi finally saw Ritsuka's eyes flutter open. He looked confused for a moment as he took note of his current position.

"Oh my god!" He yelled suddenly. He tried to sit up but lost his balance and was sent somersaulting to the floor. He was up on his feet in a second, staring at him. Luckily, the insane look was gone from his wide eyes, only shock and confusion remaining. "What the hell happened?! Why do I feel like I just came back from the dead?! And what the fuck happened to you?!"

Soubi winced at his choice of a metaphor. He glanced down at his arms, looking at the bandages that covered them. After subduing Ritsuka, Lisa Cuddy had come to the room and helped him with where Ritsuka had injured him. She seemed quite friendly to him, but he thought nothing of it.

"Well are you going to explain what happened? Why does my mind feel so fuzzy and odd, like I just did something incredibly stupid?"

"Because you did," Soubi offered quietly. "I guess your subconscious remembers it but your mind doesn't."

"Wh-what… Did I do that?" Ritsuka pointed to the bandage on the Fighter's forehead. "I want to know what I tried to do."

Soubi nodded sadly, "You left and went up to the roof when I went to go see House. When I got up there, you were wandering in circles. I tried to talk to you but you thought I was your mother. You got up on the ledge, said something about her loving you, and jumped."

Ritsuka sat on the edge of the bed, grasping onto the footboard. "You mind telling me how I didn't end up killing myself?" He finally said after awhile.

"I caught you."

"You what?!"

"I caught you," Soubi repeated. "I can see you're back to normal now."

Ritsuka was quiet for a long time. He closed his eyes and rocked back and forth on his hips. "I don't know what to say… There's something I've been wanting to tell you…" He flushed. "This is really hard for me to say but…I-!"

A nurse opened the door suddenly. "Ritsuka has visitors," She growled shoving two boys into the room and slamming the door. Soubi and Ritsuka both recognized them immediately.

"We were going to come earlier," Natsou started.

"But Ritsuka's teacher wouldn't let us," Yoji chimed in with a laugh. "Anyways, we heard. Why'd you try to off yourself, Ritsuka?"

"Was it because of your mom? Or something else? What'd it feel like?" Natsou put in.

"Both of you shut up," Soubi muttered to them under his breath.

Yoji pouted, "Aw, come on all we want is to know!"

It was too late anyways. "I didn't try to do anything!" Ritsuka snapped. "I apparently went all crazy and jumped because I thought Soubi was my mother!"

"Now there's an odd mistake!" Yoji started laughing again, joined soon by Natsou.

Another knock sounded at the door and Chase and House entered.

"Who are those two?" Natsou whispered to Yoji. He said something else to him that Soubi couldn't quite catch and then they both snickered again.

"Visitors?" Chase guessed. "Ritsuka's friends?" Well, Soubi couldn't exactly blame him for thinking that was strange. The two did look and act awfully eccentric.

"Not exactly…" He trailed off.

"I'm Yoji and that's Natsou!" Yoji said, running up and grabbing one of Chase's arms. Soubi mentally slapped himself. He had forgotten they could perfectly speak English.

"We don't feel any pain!" Natsou smiled happily.

"Natsou!" Soubi hissed. He looked at Ritsuka, who had been watching the whole exchange with interest.

"Really?" House asked thoughtfully, stepping forward.

"Its true!" Yoji boasted proudly. "You can hit us and we won't feel it!"

"What if I do this?" House grasped onto both of Yoji's cat ears and yanked hard. Yoji's expression didn't so much as even change. "Go get the colonoscopy ready," He told an astonished Chase, who nodded and left.

"I know what you're going to ask. They're both experiments. Neither feel anything. Yoji's the Sacrifice and Natsou is the Fighter. The nerve center in their brain was shut off when they were created."

"Soubi!" Natsou and Yoji shouted at once. Ritsuka looked like he couldn't believe Soubi could be so careless.

"I'll explain later, Ritsuka. Natsou, Yoji, go away for awhile," The two of them moped but obeyed Soubi.

"We have to do a colonoscopy," House told him in Japanese so that Ritsuka could understand.

"What's that?" Ritsuka questioned.

"We stick a tube up your ass and feel around for awhile. Sorry, it kinda sucks."

That sounded pretty painful. It would hurt Ritsuka even more since, unlike Soubi, he was a virgin and had never had anything stuck up there. Something worried Soubi about this procedure, though.

"And what about his ears?" He asked uncertainly.

"They'll still be there, stupid. Now lets get this over with before Cuddy finds out."


"AHHHHH!!" Ritsuka screamed out as Chase pushed the tube farther in. He grasped onto Soubi's arms, pain coursing through his entire body. He gasped for air and tried to withstand the pain.

"Ritsuka," The older male said soothingly, reaching up and stroking Ritsuka's head. The boy could hear Chase saying something in the background but his mind was too preoccupied to translate it. Soubi responded for him and then leaned down to speak softly into Ritsuka's ear, "They want you to relax."

"I'm trying to!" Ritsuka cried. "It's not that easy! Is this what it'll feel like to lose my ears?!"

Soubi laughed, "No. It's a lot more, should I say, pleasurable?"

Ritsuka whimpered, holding onto Soubi even tighter. A new wave of pain hit him and shook his body. He closed his eyes tightly and bit his lip to stop from screaming although this tactic proved to be quite unsuccessful.

"Listen, Ritsuka," Ritsuka felt Soubi move closer to him. "When we get back home, if you keep you're grades up I'll bet your mother will let you stay a friend for a few nights. You could give her your cell number and we could go someplace for a while."

"Wh-what?" Ritsuka looked up into his crystal blue eyes. He was temporary distracted, which was probably Soubi's plan.

He smiled at him, "I'll take you down to the sea and we'll stay for a few days on the coast. It'll be on a break we both have, so neither one of us will have classes."

Soubi's soft voice fell away as House exclaimed something to Foreman. Soubi stared at them and said something in English that sounded quite offensive. From the obvious tone of their voices, Ritsuka could tell something was terribly wrong.


House listened to both Foreman's notes and Soubi trying to comfort Ritsuka at once.

"Entering the colon," Foreman stated. House rolled his eyes and watched the screen boredly. Something caught his interest as he did, something that wasn't a sign of neither anemia nor hyperthyroidism.

"Stop!" House ordered, drawing Soubi's attention as well as Foreman's.

"What?" The other doctor asked.

"What do you think?! Look at the screen, dumb ass!" House pointed to the monitor.

Foreman turned to look at the screen. "His colon is enlarged!" He exclaimed.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Soubi demanded.

"It means," House said. "We have to come up with a new prognosis."


NO CLIFFHANGER THIS TIME!!

Hi everyone!

I put up a new poll and I want you guys to go vote on it :3

Its a poll on which AU story I should write after I'm done with this story.

OH! and remember to review!

`Wolfie