24. I Would Do Anything

Cynkopaté leaves…Those are basic. I am certain I can find those at an herbal shop anywhere in Ninjago. Jonquil, now that one I don't believe I have in stock, but I know a good breeding ground for a plant such as that, so that one would not be difficult to obtain, either. Hyacinth root—ah, I think I have some of those somewhere. Probably in a jar in my inventory, if it was not mistreated by the hellion that took everything from me, including my home. The plant Impatiens I do also believe I have. However, I do not have this next one, valinbravry. I actually don't know what that is. Maybe that's one of those unobtainable ingredients that Zane mentioned…

In the dead of the night, Yuki was kneeling on the tatami mats of the Mitsuhides' spare room in which held two guests, including himself. The room, reserved specifically for housing visitors, was empty but for the occupied futon that was stretched over the middle of the room, and wide paneled windows to the back of the room to annunciate the fact that this was at the back of the large house. In his hands he held two things: one, a piece of paper written with two columns of familiar and unfamiliar herbs, curled in Zane's cursive writing over the snowy paper, and two, a dainty ink pen to mark which ones Yuki familiarized with and which he had never even heard of. Though there was a small amount of moonlight coming through the paneled window, it wasn't enough to read in the dark at the edge of the wall, so Yuki had to adjust the light diffractor in his eye several times before he'd been able to get the words to show up. He kept himself attentive to the list in front of him, as he was calling a favor at the moment, but many times he found himself becoming distracted by his own thought processes.

In the futon a meter away from him, the body of Seiko underneath many blankets rolled onto her side, turning her back on Yuki. He'd already kept monitor on her body temperature, which was almost back to normal now at 97.7 with a whole number and more tenths to go, having already swam through a mild case of hypothermia. Making sure that Seiko was going to be fine first, he had had to reassure Cole that he would keep watch over her through the night so that the drained man could get his own rest. Cole and Zane were already sound asleep; if Yuki tuned in his ears to a high frequency, he was able to hear them breathing steadily two rooms down, already inured to their dreams that held more of their fancy than today's events did. Being the only one in the house awake, Yuki had plenty of time to think to himself about everything that transpired throughout today without distraction, things that he had found unspeakable to even mention before. It had really been a day that was more than usual to handle.

He listened to the sound of Bokuyo's breathing alongside the other little girl in the next-door room, hearing them calm under dreaming. In sleep everyone was less indebted to the bank of emotions they kept getting loans out of, unable to give back all the feelings they were having going through this devastation, and Yuki was glad they all could rest. If there was any way to describe today, it was that this was the day the devil came to reap his earnings from everyone, and he had taken more than needed.

Losing everyone the way he had was surprisingly light on his shoulders. It was the breakage of his emotional switch in his wrist, the one that Zane accidentally damaged, that made it hard for him to feel all he wanted to feel. Frustrated with the fact that he was lacking his humanity, he tried to keep reminding himself of what had happened to his friends, hoping he could spark his own emotion without needing some stupid switch to tell him what he could and could not do. He kept waiting for it to happen. It did not.

His note-taking and inventory check became almost routinely monotonic.

Burdock root…have it. Dapplejuno juice? Never heard of it. He left the space beside it blank, checking off the next on the list. Larkspur, can get that from that old woman in Ninjago City. Cravin's Sling, I know where that grows. Madonna, can find some. Bell ladder, have some. Birthright? Yuki stopped the checkmarks, his forehead wrinkling with worry. Birthright was very toxic, and deadly, at that. It was known best for stopping the heart during witchcraft murder-to-resurrection spells, but Yuki never bothered with things belonging to a cult. Why would there be Birthright on here if it was poison?

Perhaps something else on the list further on will be used to challenge its purpose, he thought, still unnerved but continuing down the row of ingredients on his own. The thought of the Birthright didn't fade. Manda'rin plant, I think they have those in Maolo Town. Witch Stone? I don't know what that is. He'd never heard of a Witch Stone. He left it blank. Soon he found out that those who followed were just as helpless. Broilrot, no. Jvkny, that's not even a word, and no. Raycavn, neit. Shkn, nein. Bravo plant, non. Meldrose, ne. Hishe, nu…

I know none of the rest of this list. None of it. Never even heard of them. This has to be some kind of joke. Zane most certainly cannot be serious; as you can see, Cole was correct in assuming that this was only a dream, Zane. Half of these 'ingredients' are not even words. Some of them don't even have vowels!

Yuki rubbed his eyes, setting down the paper. He surprisingly found his body worn out from all the excitement it drug through, from this morning's surprise to ending it with a hypothermic woman. Speaking of which, that hypothermia did not seem very legitimate, now that he considered it. Though Seiko-chan's body temperature was lower than usual when Yuki arrived to her company, it quickly dropped when he'd entered, making him quite wary that this possibly was not a natural case of hypothermia. He had his suspicions as it became clearer that she was in danger of losing her heartbeat forever, but even the skilled healer knew that hypothermia, though silent and deadly, did not come upon someone so suddenly. Once more he felt like a mouse being played with by a cat, something stronger than he was, and certainly able to take him down with the swipe of a mighty paw. The words that Zane had spoken in dream of a 'Greater Evil' cut through his mind.

Under her covers, Seiko was shivering again. Yuki hadn't noticed it with all of his check-sketching, occupied by the discouragement of vowel usage by whatever mind god that sat inside of Zane's cranium. He now found that her whole barrage of blankets was trembling with her, and underneath that, her breathing was becoming rugged, which he sensed was not due to the hypothermia. Perhaps it was due to the dream she was having.

To Yuki's curiosity, he detected her body temperature fluctuate by the change in vibration through the air. He rose from the floor and wandered over to the side of the futon she faced, kneeling down before her again. Her face was in grimace's hold. Whatever she dreams it comes unpleasantly, Yuki observed, reaching towards her to lay a hand on the nearest patch of bare skin that he could see, which was her cheek. Seiko kept quivering under him.

His monitors said her body temperature had dropped to 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Somehow, Seiko had lost body heat dramatically over the change of a minute and thirty-seconds or so, which is impossible to do unless you are submerged in a lake of icy water or cloaked in snow, all of everything equivalent that was nowhere near her current status quo. Yuki was baffled.

Something was screwing with him for sure. Nervously, he glanced at the window, wondering what lurked outside that was trying to manipulate he and the others into death, or something close enough to a living hell with constant torture that didn't even sleep through the night. Yuki detected no other threat in the household but what now was eating away at Seiko, a chill that he could feel drop down to 96.4 now. Close again to hypothermia.

Her teeth were starting to chatter in her sleep. Yuki tried to tuck the covers over her body closer underneath her the way he used to tuck in Bokuyo, stuffing some of the blanket under his legs and body to keep him cocooned in warmth. He didn't get much of a response.

Yuki bit his lip. How do you fight something that can control you by whim with such basic capabilities? He knew not of how to argue back with this problem. There was no way.

He was useless.

"I feel useless."

"Don't say that!" She whirled on him, face still pale with what they'd seen, hiding in the alley to hopefully avoid being seen by the attacker who jumped a poor homeless man for his few coins. Her white skin and red lips drained of much color. "There is not much you could've done."

"I could have. I chose not to, therefore I am useless." He sighed, trying not to envision the sight of the robbery. He leaned back against the brick wall behind him, seeking solace in his hands where he looked down to, afraid to see anything else. "Any soldier would've saved that man, but all I did was turn and run, afraid for my own life. I did not go to war with all the other young men in my village. I did not offer my body up to be shot and killed in war. I am too weak. I, the son of a veteran, too weak to do much else but fret with plants." His shoulders fell miserably. "All I am good at is a woman's job."

"Yuki-sama! Don't speak that way!" She grabbed him by the arm, gently shaking him. The way she wanted him to, he rose his face to hers, catching her crystal blue eyes in a protective glare. Her long, black tresses fell to either side of her cheeks at chin length. "You don't need to go to war to prove you can be useful. You have saved plenty of lives singlehandedly with the path you chose for your life. You have proven that a man can also do a woman's job!"

"Not really." Yuki looked down, defeated again. "My mother herbally conducted a spiritual experiment when she was pregnant with me to determine the gender of her baby. The answer was that I was female, so automatically from there my mother announced that her daughter would take over her profession after spending a lifetime learning how to herbalize with the plants of nature. My profession was set for me even before I was born. I didn't have another choice, otherwise my mother would have gone back on the word she gave to all people she knew—the whole town—and that would make her less worthy of a person." He shook his head. "I am no more than the substitute for the daughter she wanted."

"So?"

"So?" Yuki looked up at her, a little surprised at her answer. Blue eyes bold, she grabbed his hands, holding them both between hers, and kept his fingers squished between hers and her palms. "What does that mean, Mitsuko?"

"Who cares if that's that? You're still you, and I like you better than any soldier there is." Mitsuko smiled, pulling him closer. "You're good at what you do, and you touch people's lives every day just by giving them a little mixture or saving them or giving them a checkup. You might be doing a 'woman's job', but that doesn't change the fact that you're really good at what you do. While soldiers do sacrifice themselves for our safety, you heal those who can't heal themselves. You're not useless." She titled back her chin, smiling happily at him, small white teeth glistening. He pursed his lips. "You can deny that all you want, but you're the most heartless person I know. You'd do anything to save someone who needed medicine, doctrine, help. So what if you haven't taken a bullet. Doesn't make you any less of a hero."

This girl looked so much like Mitsuko that it frightened Yuki. Though fragile, kitten-like Mitsuko could not be compared to the snarky Seiko, he always found it hard not to look at Seiko and see the similarities in appearance. It was the face shape, the eye shape, the hair color, and the form of their lips that made Yuki find them so identical. Their faces were almost completely the same, except that Mitsuko had no skin pigment, and had blue eyes, and had bright red lips, and chin-length black hair with straight bangs. Seiko was not that way at all. In fact, she was almost the total opposite. Whereas Mitsuko had always been gentle wind…Seiko was raging fire.

He looked down at Seiko's hyperventilating figure. She was desperate for real warmth, and when he checked, she was already decimals away from 95 degrees, which would automatically put her into hypothermia. What could he do? Would this monster continue to drop her temperature, no matter what he did? Yuki seriously debated the idea of going to wake Cole up from his sleep, knowing that Cole had told him to do so if anything happened, but he would feel guilty from stealing sleep from him. Yuki could go scavenge for more blankets, but that might not work, for he could break something or get lost or come back and find her already in moderate hypothermia because he'd left her.

You'd do anything to save someone who needed medicine, doctrine, help.

Yuki gnawed his lip. He had an idea, but it was an outrageous one, and to be honest he was not very fond of the thought. Seiko's teeth clacked to one another, their clamor tumbling against his ears and reminding him that she was, in fact, freezing down there. He took a deep breath.

I would do anything. I cannot let someone die under my watch.

Yuki rose to his feet, padding across the mats towards the paneled door and gently sliding it open, the noise like someone opening a drawer from a dresser. He slipped down the narrow hall to the next room beside Seiko's, the sliding door kept open at a slight crack, in all likelihood for the children's sake. He slid his hand between door and frame, pushing it open to fit his shoulder length. The two futons on either side of the room had tiny, dark shapes lumped into their blankets, soundly asleep with gumdrops dancing in their dream clouds or something to that effect. Yuki's footsteps made no sound walking over the floor towards where Bokuyo lay, curled on his side with his tiny lips parted, peacefully unaware of his mother's quick plunge into eternal ice. His sweet face was lost to the world.

Hating to have to move him, Yuki bent down like he was going to kneel, reaching out with both arms and starting to slide them around Bokuyo so he could lift him. Automatically, the little boy's eyes fluttered at the first note of movement, and in the air with his blanket in tow, he blinked dark eyes at Yuki, confused. "'Ooki?" he whispered, yawning. "What 'Ooki doing?"

"Shh," Yuki said back once he'd closed the door behind him, leaving it slivered for the little girl on the other side of the room. The narrow hallway was just wide enough to fit both of them. You poor thing, he apologized mentally, seeing the dazed little boy fumble with his falling blanket, which was fwapping against Yuki's knees, dragging on the floor like a cape would follow a king. "Your mother would like you to come sleep by her."

"Momma?" Bokuyo whispered. Yuki smiled at him, loving how he looked so sleepy. As his life was taken away from him, Yuki had never had the chance to father a son—much less conceive one—that he'd always wanted. Nobody around him ever had any children, for they, too, were robots, and the only little boy that had come around was Danielle's son, who did not remain much long after he'd come. Besides, Yuki was not really allowed around him. (Yuki and Danielle were not on best terms. Danielle was a witch who abused nature, which was beyond Yuki's natural standards and his expectations of those who knew how to use the earth's gifts to heal its creations.) Upon first meeting Bokuyo when Master Wu had brought along the first one, Yuki found that the fatherless boy never let his lack of male figures hurt him. He was the most carefree child that the droid met in either of his lives. Getting him back after a painful death was a gift he could not have been happier for, and to add to that was the chance to watch him grow, and live alongside him. He treated Bokuyo like he was his own.

When living at the monastery, Lloyd used to joke that Bokuyo was the "child with a hundred fathers and no mother," just because of all the male figures in his life that accounted for the mother who didn't seem to want him. It was painful in life that that could be true of the small child—in which case, it was.

Back inside of Seiko's temporary room, Yuki shut the door behind him, and carried the tiny child to the side of Seiko's front half. He knelt down again. She was still shivering, chattering, moaning. No better than before, with a steady temp of 96.2. Yuki, pushing away the covers with one hand, slowly and gently slipped Bokuyo underneath the covers next to her, taking his blanket and putting it over the top one in Seiko's collection. He leaned down and whispered in the little boy's ear, "Hold onto your mother, now, and keep her warm, okay?"

"'Kay, Ooki," Bokuyo yawned, and wrapped his little arms around Seiko, burying his face in her chest. Luckily, Cole had donated one of his shirts to Seiko for using so she wasn't completely naked underneath the covers, her little son wrapped around her like a monkey. Yuki leaned away. That should be a little better, he thought, watching moonlight turn her black hair almost blue, her face be cast in a pale, creamy color more than what he remembered ever seeing on Mitsuko's face. Now that he looked…Seiko seemed plenty more peaceful with her eyes shut…

Stop that. Yuki's eyes closed, squeezing tight immediately. Sitting on his knees, his hands curled in his lap, he felt embarrassed, bowing his head and having his shoulders pull up tight, arms extended to full length against his knees. Don't be foolish. Now is not the time to be noticing other women. You only see her because she looks like Mitsuko. With his eyes still shut, he rose lithely to his feet, and whirled around to face the window. He opened his eyes after several minutes passed—he counted them off in his head.

"You'd do anything to save someone who needed help…"

Yuki shut his eyes again after drawing nearer to the window, the moonlight scarring his face with its gentle touch. He took in a deep breath, filling him with safe air, and felt melancholy follow it through and tap into his inner system, coloring him sorry for himself. He felt guilty for taking time to reminisce about his own hurt, but it was inevitable…oh, why did Yuki even offer to stay in here and watch Seiko-chan anyway…he was so stupid…

You were wrong, Mitsuko. His shoulders fell, head bowing. He trembled, taking fistfuls of his dirty kimono into his palms, throttling them until his knuckles began to hurt. I did not do anything to save you.

Yuki swore, then and there, that he would never lay a hand on Seiko. He'd never touch her in any way other than to assist if she needed to be healed, and even then he would be cool, reserved, and professional. He'd never look at Seiko in any way that might have contended with his thoughts about Mitsuko, and he'd never see her in any way other than just another person to deal with. He'd never think about her as a single man might consider a beautiful woman.

Normally, Yuki was a man very true to his word.

But the future would prove how very wrong he was in making that promise to himself.

There was no way he'd be able to keep it.

I needed to put this chapter in not only to move this story forward but to actually help me in writing the first chapter of FE, since I kinda needed this one for it to make sense. Anyway.

GHAAD/N! ! !