Chapter Two

It's three long days on Chijou before we manage to figure out what's going on. And when I say long days, I mean it. Normally Akimiya is a good companion, but these days he's brooding and angsting and generally making me want to punch him in the face. Yeah, yeah, pot and kettle and all that. I'm not a hypocrite, precisely. I know damn well that I'm annoying when I angst. I just choose not to care.

After those three long days, it's three more long days tracking down the culprit, and another two before we manage to kill it. (Yes, it. Nasty little demon thing.) I have been on Chijou for eight days with no company but an extremely depressed and snappish Akimiya. I don't care that it's nine o'clock at night; I'm going home right now.

For one thing, I want to get Akimiya off Chijou. He keeps getting this shifty look in his eyes, and I can tell that he's thinking about popping in on the old homestead. Not on my watch. We're going home if I have to haul him by the platinum blonde roots.

Fortunately (for both of us), he doesn't argue. I make sure he gets back to his house safely. Technically, I should go drop off the report at the office, but no one will be there at this hour anyway, so I'll just bring it tomorrow when I go in the morning.

The lights are still on when I get home, which is nice. Tsuzuki isn't an early riser by any means, but ten o'clock is still a little late for him to be up and about. The answer becomes apparent when I step inside; Tsuzuki and Tatsumi are having coffee in the kitchen. They've started doing this fairly recently, and I think it's good for both of them. It gives Tsuzuki someone to be close to when I'm not here. And I'm not jealous, honestly. I know Tatsumi would never dream of taking Tsuzuki away from me.

"Tadaima," I call as I walk into the kitchen. They're both sitting at the kitchen table. Tsuzuki starts to bounce out of his chair, but I just grin and motion for him to sit down, then plop onto his lap. Tatsumi gives me a friendly smile.

"I didn't think you'd be back tonight," Tsuzuki says, wrapping his arms around my waist. "It got so late I just assumed you were spending the night on Chijou again."

"I had to get away from Akimiya before I ripped his intestines out with a fork." I lean over and give Tsuzuki a kiss, which complements my words rather oddly.

"That bad, was it?" Tsuzuki asks, returning the kiss with enthusiasm. Quite a change from the man who nearly knocked himself over to get away from me the first time he kissed me. He doesn't care in the slightest that Tatsumi is still sitting there, watching us with a rather amused smile.

"Worse." I stand up. "You two want more coffee? I'm going to get some tea for myself."

"I'd like more," Tsuzuki says.

Tatsumi declines, so I head into the kitchen. I can hear them talking in low voices as I make my tea and warm up the coffee. I'm back out with another two mugs in a few minutes. Tsuzuki takes his and pulls me up a chair, which I plop into.

"So how'd it go?" he asks.

I give them a brief description of what had happened. "Really, I think we could have been back three days ago if Akimiya and I were both working at full brain power," I admit. "But he kept moping and he was driving me to distraction by doing it. His shields aren't the best, and mine can only take so much friction. On the sixth day I told him to stop taking Watari's potion. I just couldn't take it anymore."

"Don't worry about it," Tsuzuki says. "I'm amazed you ever managed to put up with me."

I roll my eyes at him. "You have walls," I say pointedly. "Hell, it's hard to read your emotions even when I want to, your natural shields are so strong. Akimiya has crap for shields, in comparison. He was a very open, expressive person, and it shows." I glance at Tatsumi, who may as well be a stone wall, speaking of people who have strong natural shields. I'm sort of curious to hear what he thinks of all this.

He catches my glance. "Tsuzuki-san has been telling me what he knows about Sakamoto-san," he says. "I don't think I should venture a guess on what to do, though. Not until I have more information."

I hesitate at that. Akimiya's story really isn't something I want to spread around. However, I tell Tsuzuki everything, and I know that Tatsumi can be trusted. So I give them both a brief outline of what Akimiya told me. Tsuzuki is shaking by the end of it; Tatsumi is expressionless as usual, but his eyes are troubled.

"See, that's the problem," I say with a sigh. "There's nothing we can do about it. He just has to deal. But he's not."

Tsuzuki taps at the table thoughtfully. "It's a terrible thing to have to deal with," he says softly.

"I know that," I say. "But it's done, it's past. It can't be changed. But I can't just tell him to get over it."

"No, I somewhat doubt that would help," Tatsumi agrees.

"And I just keep waiting for him to decide he doesn't want to be a shinigami anymore," I say, chewing on my lower lip thoughtfully. "He became one to . . . to protect her, because he knew that his murderer wanted her. Then he got back and found out that he'd killed himself, and there was no need to protect her . . . and he's so unhappy that sooner or later I think he may try to get himself killed." I look up at them. "I want to believe he's stronger than that, but . . . I know how much being separated from the one you love can hurt."

Tsuzuki squeezes my hand and says nothing.

Tatsumi sighs softly. "It's not an easy situation," he murmurs, "and it's made less easy by the fact that we can't really ask anyone about it. We can't spread Sakamoto-san's personal business around; that wouldn't be fair. And at the same time, we can't just ignore this."

"We have to help her."

Tatsumi and I both turn to look at Tsuzuki. He's staring into his coffee mug.

"What?" I ask.

"We have to help her," he says. "Akimiya is upset because she's unhappy. If we could help her move on, find her own happiness . . . it would ease his pain. It wouldn't help his loneliness, but at least it would keep him from being guilty about how unhappy she is."

"That's a good point," Tatsumi says thoughtfully. "But none of us are therapists."

"Therapy's not what she needs," I reply. "She needs to let go of him."

In a second, we all get it.

"Damn," Tsuzuki says quietly, startling me. He doesn't swear often. "He's been seeing her . . . in his dreams."

I nod slowly. "And she's been seeing him. Perhaps he doesn't even realize that she is . . . but she's clinging to his memory so tightly that if he shows up in her dreams, she'll see him. Whether he wants her to or not."

Silence for a few seconds.

"Shall we speak to him about it?" Tatsumi asks.

"I will," I say wearily. "He'd be angry, and rightfully so, if he knew I had discussed this with anyone. I'll ask him about it. If he's doing it unintentionally, we may be able to fix it without much trouble. But if he's not . . ."

"Then he won't stop just because we tell him it's best," Tsuzuki says flatly.

"Aa," I say. "And I'm not sure I can even blame him."

~~~~

Tsuzuki and I stay up late talking, which is probably pretty stupid of us since we both have to be at work early the next morning. But still, every once in a while it's worth sacrificing a good night's sleep to just lie around and talk. We talk a lot about Akimiya; I think Tsuzuki can tell how much this is really bothering me. But we talk about other things too.

When morning comes and I'm doing little better than fours hour of sleep, it finally hits me what a long eight days it was. Normally missions (I always want to find a better word than that but never can) only take three or four days; six at most. Eight days of straight work has worn me out.

My sum thoughts when the alarm clock goes off are "hey . . . that noise means something . . . but what?" Then Tsuzuki leans down and kisses my forehead and I promptly fall back to sleep.

A few minutes later, he shakes me gently. "Hey, wake up and I'll give you a present."

I manage to pry my eyes open. "Unnngh," is my brilliant statement for the morning. "It'd better be one damn good present."

He smiles down at me; for once he's already up and dressed. "You looked worn out, so I called Kachou and got you the next two days off. He said you deserved a break after the week you had. I called Akimiya and told him too, so neither of you have to come in today or tomorrow. Kachou says I can have tomorrow off, okay?"

I brighten. My days off rarely coincide with Tsuzuki's days off, since we work such different schedules. He has a normal five day work week, whereas I sneak in breaks whenever there's nothing better for me to do. I've worked for ten days straight and then not had to come in for four. It's just the nature of the job.

"That's good," I say sleepily. "But my report . . ."

"I'll take it in and give it to Kachou. You left it on the kitchen table, right?"

I nod. "Arigatou."

He grins at me. "No need to thank me. I'll see you this evening, so get some sleep."

I nod and fall back asleep almost instantly. When I wake up again, it's past noon, yet for some reason I still feel exhausted. I guess I hadn't realized how much of a toll the last eight days had taken on me. Still, I can't lie around in bed all day; I won't be able to sleep tonight and then I'll be a zombie on my day off tomorrow.

There's plenty to do around the house. Tsuzuki isn't a slob by any means of the word, but I'm a bit of a neatfreak, and I don't mind cleaning. I need to do laundry, too. Desperately. I don't own many clothes, yet I hate to do laundry, so I'm constantly out of clean things to wear.

So I turn it into a busy day. I do laundry. I clean. I chop vegetables to make a stir fry for dinner. Tsuzuki . . . simply cannot cook. I love him dearly, but the one thing I'll never ask is for him to cook for me. Around three o'clock, I decide I should bake something for him. I'm not great in the kitchen, but sweets are such an easy way to make Tsuzuki happy that I've learned how simply for the looks on his face.

Not adventurous . . . not wanting to go shopping . . . not much in the house. There's always cake mix, though. Cake it shall be.

What with one thing and another, I'm only putting the cake in the oven at four thirty, at the same time that my laundry goes into the dryer. Very productive afternoon on all counts. The cake will be done just about the same time that Tsuzuki gets home, so I can let it cool while we eat dinner and then we can eat it. As for what to do with this half hour . . . I think I'll nap.

I flop facedown onto the bed wearing nothing but a pair of old sweatpants. (When I do laundry, I really do laundry. I wash every stitch of clothing I own.) And I fall asleep. Right like that. Which is pretty impressive, because the room is kind of chilly and I don't usually sleep on my stomach. I wake up to a backrub, which is quite possibly the best way on earth to wake up. "Mmmph."

"Still tired?" Tsuzuki asks me.

"Yeah," I reply, sighing softly into the pillow. "Feels good, though." Tsuzuki, I have found, is a master at backrubs. I don't know where he learned, but he's just got a way of finding every ache and getting rid of it. He uses them to melt me into the ground quite often. I think he finds it funny.

He leans down and kisses the back of my neck, then continues with the backrub. "It was quiet today. Nothing new to do."

"Good." I think I'm going to fall back to sleep if he keeps this up. Fortunately, duty prevents this. I sit up, which surprises him a little; I don't usually end the backrubs voluntarily. "The cake's almost done," I explain to his puzzled look.

His eyes get large and sparkly. "You baked a cake? WAAIII!" And he glomps onto me, knocking me backwards onto the bed. I can't help but laugh.

"Yeah, but it's gonna burn if you don't let me up," I say.

"Waahh . . ." Tsuzuki gets up, one hundred percent puppy, and bounds off to the kitchen. I take my time following; though he can't cook, he's perfectly capable of taking a cake out of the oven. The laundry is done, too, so I snag a T-shirt and pull it on before walking out to the kitchen. Tsuzuki has put the cake on the counter and is giving the vegetables a speculative look. I think I'll intercept him before he takes it into his head to cook dinner.

"It has to cool, you know," I say.

"I know," he says with a sigh. He thuds into a chair and watches me cook. "Why were you so worn out, anyway?" he asks.

"Not sure," I say. "Think it was probably the effort of holding my shields up against Akimiya all week. I mean, that can be really tiring. And the fight with the demon was no picnic. Isn't Konoe-kachou going to start teaching Akimiya 'jitsu? It would really be a help."

"He has been," Tsuzuki says with a shrug. "But Akimiya just doesn't have the innate talent for it like some of us do. He'll learn, but it's going to take him a while."

Try as I may, I can't get Tsuzuki to wait for dinner. The second the cake is cool enough to spread frosting on, he's done so, and has happily started eating it. "Save some of that," I say. "I want to give some to Akimiya. Maybe we can have lunch with him tomorrow . . . I don't like to think of him sitting on his own moping for two days straight."

"Mm, that's a good idea," Tsuzuki says, his mouth full of chocolate. "Much as I'd like to keep you all to myself . . ."

I laugh. It's funny, most couples as possessive as Tsuzuki and I are of each other would guard their time together very carefully. But we don't. I don't know why, really, but we're just as content to sit around with Akimiya or Tatsumi as we are to sit around by ourselves. I think really, in the end, it comes down to the fact that we're so close, we don't need to be alone in order to feel close.

"We'll still have the whole afternoon and evening," I say. "That's plenty of time to be alone together."

"Yup." Tsuzuki gives a cheerful grin, then carefully picks up the rest of the cake and puts it on the counter, where he won't be tempted to eat it. I'm sure he'll have another piece before bed, but for him, he's showing an enormous amount of restraint. I suppose that only goes to show how worried he really is about Akimiya; he's sacrificing chocolate cake for him.

After that we eat dinner (I have to convince Tsuzuki not to eat another piece of cake just because he finished dinner) and flop down onto the couch for a while. Sometimes we can just sit there and read, or watch TV, but Tsuzuki is in a cuddly mood. I think hearing about what happened to Akimiya and Rika really bothered him. Being a Shinigami is not the most safe job in the world, and while I have no intention of leaving him, we've both come to terms with the fact that it may happen.

Honestly, I think we'll both be happier when he can be on field duty again and we go back to being partners, helping each other. It's not that we don't trust Akimiya. It's just that if something were to happen to me, I know for a fact that Tsuzuki will spend the rest of his existence wondering if it would have been different if he'd been there.

But what's scary is that if one of us should die, I can easily picture what happened to Akimiya happening to us. I could never let go of him.

I think it's safe to say that I'm all too happy to cuddle for a while.

~~~~

Right. Someone explain how I got talked into asking Akimiya about this? Oh, yeah. I volunteered. Next time I volunteer for something, somebody please smack me upside the head and remind me that I don't want to. I mean, Akimiya was perfectly pleasant at lunch yesterday with Tsuzuki . . . but then again, that's probably because he figured Tsuzuki has no idea what's going on.

No, not true. He knows that I share almost everything with Tsuzuki. But still, he would do his best to hide it around him. I've come to the conclusion that Akimiya really doesn't want anyone to know how screwed up he is. He's got a bit of a reputation as the sensible and level-headed one around here.

Right. Going to talk to Akimiya. We've got about an hour before lunch and we've finished all our morning work.

Think I'll let my shields down. That way, if he's lying, I'll know.

"Ano . . . Akimiya?"

He glances up at me. "Yeah?"

"I need to talk to you."

"More therapy?" He looks back down at the book he's reading. He's feigning total disinterest, but I can feel him tense up. He most definitely doesn't want to discuss this, and I don't really blame him.

I sigh and scoot my chair a few inches towards him. "Akimiya . . . when you see Rika in her dreams . . . does she see you?"

There's a sudden wave -- denial, fear, pain, and self-hatred -- that's suddenly damped as he realizes he's projecting. Not gone, but lessened. "What makes you think that?"

"I'm an empath, Akimiya. You can't lie to me."

Another wave, just as quickly forced down. More fear this time. He knows he's caught, and he's terrified that I'm going to do something to him. "She does," he says reluctantly. "But she's dreaming. She thinks it's all a figment of her imagination."

There's a long pause while I ponder this, and decide to appeal to his concern for her above all else. "Akimiya, you're only hurting her more with this. She has to let go of you, and you're keeping her from doing that."

I expected -- I'm not sure what I expected. More fear, maybe, or more pain, but not this. Not this sudden, all-encompassing, burning rage. I try to get my shields up before it hits, but they shatter beneath the force of it and I nearly fall out of the chair. "Aki -- "

He grabs me by the shirt, pulling me out of the chair and slamming me up against the wall. "Who the hell do you think you are?!" His voice is low, hissing; he obviously doesn't want anyone else to hear us arguing and come to my rescue. "You have no idea what you're talking about! I can't live without her! I can't just stop!"

"Akimiya . . ." I can't think. Alternating waves of pain and fury and despair are leaking into me, and I can't tell where he stops and I start. That happens sometimes between Tsuzuki and I, during our nightmares, but this is worse because I'm awake and I just can't scrape my shields back together because he's shattered them far too badly. And why was I stupid enough to let my shields down in the first place I should know better than that sometimes I think I'm really just an idiot

he's still talking but I can't really hear what he's saying anymore and he's afraid so I am too I think he's really terrified that I'll make him stop

he can't live without her

he can't

right about then I do the smart thing and pass out.

~~~~

My head. Is fucking. Killing me. At least, I think it is. The way I feel right now, it could be someone else's head that hurts, and I'm just feeling it. Entirely possible. Happened once when Tsuzuki broke his finger at the office doing something and I felt it. But that's Tsuzuki and I, and I don't think Tsuzuki has a headache. I think it's me with the headache.

I have no shields. None, zero, zippo, zilch. I can feel pressing concern from all directions and alternating waves of guilt and fear. I manage to pry my eyes open. Infirmary bed. Right, I passed out. Akimiya, Tsuzuki, and Watari are all leaning over me. That would explain the guilt and fear. Right. I've got to get my shields back up before I go insane, because someone is really hating themselves right about now and I'm sort of hoping it isn't me. But I can't tell.

"Are you all right?" Tsuzuki asks. More concern washes over me, which is okay, because it drowns out Akimiya's guilt.

I nod weakly. I think I'm hyperventilating. "Tsuzuki . . ." I manage to get him to lean down so I can speak right into his ear. ". . . no shields . . . please . . . get Akimiya away from me . . ."

Tsuzuki nods. "He'll be okay," he announces cheerfully to the others.

"Hisoka, I'm sorry," Akimiya says desperately. "I didn't mean to hurt you, I just . . ."

Tsuzuki sees me flinch away from the outpouring of emotion and pulls Akimiya away firmly. "He'll be fine," he says. "He just needs some peace and quiet to get his shields back in working order. Let's go get some lunch and you can tell me what happened."

Tsuzuki can be very authoritative on the rare occasion that he puts his mind to it, and not only does he have seniority, but he's also older than Akimiya. And as for him, he's so shell-shocked that he just allows Tsuzuki to pull him out of the room with another mumbled apology.

"What happened?" Watari asked me.

"Shields went," I whisper. "Akimiya got mad." I close my eyes. My head is still throbbing, and I think it's safe to say that it's not Watari's fault. "Just . . . give me some peace and quiet to put them back together . . ."

Watari nods and immediately backs away. That's one of the things I love about Watari. If you say you know what's wrong, he takes your word on it and takes whatever steps are necessary to fix the problem. He doesn't insist on checking to see if I'm right.

Now that I'm alone, I can finally feel what's me and what isn't me, because everything else is more distant. God, was I stupid taking down my shields like that. I just didn't expect him to freak out so badly.

No, think about that later. More important things to do right now.

Once I know where I stop and everything else begins, it's fairly easy to put my shields back together. They're thin, but there; I'll be all right around everyone except Akimiya. Who is, of course, going to want to see me.

Watari comes back in. I think about an hour has gone by. "Feeling better?" he asks.

I manage a nod. "Want to go home," I say. My voice is still weak. I feel very wobbly. That might be the first time I've actually blacked out from my empathy . . . then again, it was the first time I was dumb enough to take my shields down for a confrontation.

"Yeah, you should," Watari says. "You okay to walk?"

I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand. I'm okay with standing. Seem to be okay with walking too. "Aa," I say. "Tell Tsuzuki where I went, okay? And tell Akimiya that I'm not mad at him."

"What happened?" Watari ask.

"I was talking to Akimiya and I thought he might be lying, so I let my shields down," I explain. "Then he got mad and it just . . . knocked me flat, basically."

"Ah," Watari said. "You'll be okay then. Go on, take off for the day." He winks. "I'll make your excuses for you."

I stick out my tongue at him and take the back door out.

~~~~

Right! I know have an idea of exactly where I'm going with this, and I finished the other 'fic I was working on, so this one will probably be coming a little quicker. Feedback please?