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In keeping conversations civil; substitute religion, and politics, for family.
Tenchi Muyo: Sanctuary and Asylum
-Verse Fourteen is Empathy-
-Part 1-
Bare these necessities, a martyr's teeth.
Embrace for the big bang break.
Turn karma to masochism, all for Us.
Put the selves out and up and at stake.
-ZJS
Queen Funaho's reflection blurred on four surfaces like three dimensions. The rare petrified wood was a treasure that only Jurains could access and not even Jurians could duplicate. And yet if the general public ever discovered how much truly existed its market value would shift dramatically. Wide enough for an escort on each arm and tall enough to give a child a shoulder ride, this tunnel had connected Tsunami's chamber to the emperor's quarters since Jurai. Now, after the advent of teleport stations, it remained one of few dramatically long passages left in the entire palace. Queens were oft more apt to appreciate and utilize its contemplative quality, thus for generations they had been the ones to kept it.
Funaho didn't want to reconsider anything; she wanted to surprise her husband. She wasn't rushing past an even pace, and she didn't hold the scroll in her fist like a crumpled sword; it merely waved and flapped at her side, breaking the rhythm of her steps.
Confident from the moment she opened the passage, she'd hoped to be even more assured at the other end. Everything remained constant till the door to Azusa's study.
She wished she'd had the time to seek her sister queen's support, just as she knew she would.
"Well isn't this a surprise." Funaho could see the emperor's smile even as he remained bent over his papers, likely remembering the romantic inspiration behind her last use of the passage.
A dignified wife breathed away any hopeless emotional mixes and strode up to his desk.
"Could you please explain this?" She spread her thin document over the others with a fresh coat of ice.
Azusa merely read, then answered it with a new sheet of steel.
"This is a royal order revoking Professor Washu Hakube's access to any and all patients at the fourth galactic sanitarium."
Funaho slapped her husband with such force that she instinctively looked at her palm to see if his beard had cut. There was redness, followed by a slight throbbing that spilled fire down the tendons of her arm and into her chest. She'd never struck another person in all her life, but shock, guilt: both faded and were forgotten. In strong or better than stubborn silence, she waited for the repercussions of her heinous act, blinking once to stand like a tree but not like wood.
Azusa did not rise from his chair or even lean back in it. He breathed a barely or overly forced calm to turn his head downward again. Funaho glared to make sure he was truly reexamining the document.
"It seems it did not reach its intended destination."
He held the paper up by its top edges. When he looked over at Funaho she remembered the last time she'd challenged his authority. This time the force behind her sought to shame rather than subdue.
"Anyone who aids in the interception of a message sent by the emperor," Azusa began, "can be tried for treason."
Back amid the suppressed shivers, the cries for surrender and pleas of forgiveness, something made its presence known in Funaho's self. It was the same thing that had strongly suggested she question her husband's decision, the one that had commanded she undercut his authority, and the one that now justified violence. She turned to him as if to bow, but remained starring down at a boy who was now ready to have his punishment explained.
"There are Jurains here who would readily lay down their lives for me, even to defy their emperor."
She watched the accusing stare drain from Azusa's eyes, leaving only restrained shock.
"They stand ready for the consequences of their actions, just as I do. And though they are in no position to explain, I am," she narrowed her eyes, "if you are."
"None of this should be necessary." The voice of the galaxy's most powerful emperor grew tired as he set the document down and pushed away from his desk. Funaho kept his shock warm for him as he continued, one hand massaging his eyes.
"Ryoko attacked and destroyed a large portion of a Galaxy Police station. Although by some miracle no one was seriously injured, she showed every capacity for further destruction. This time we found no evidence that she was being controlled by any outside force. There was no other course of action available to me than to have her incarcerated in the best facility possible."
He breathed, deciding if he'd wait for her to reply, and deciding against it.
"And still you are driven to undermine me."
"But, she's not-" Funaho began, without a sign of hearing his expressed confusion, and without half the strength she should have gathered.
"Not what? Not 'well'? All the more reason to keep her where she can do no harm."
"And what does that have to do with disallowing her visitors?!" Jagged anger found and dug its way into Funaho's voice.
"You know as well as I do that there is a security risk every time we allow a visitor into one of those containment rooms."
"But Washu ^designed^ those rooms! Washu ^designed^ Ryoko!"
"So she has reminded me on numerous occasions, suggesting that I trust ^her^ to ensure the safety of the galaxy." Azusa kept calm for his wife's rising anger, but frowned at how quickly she seemed to forget how recently she'd forgotten herself.
"She's her ^mother^ for Tsunami's sake!"
"We should not even be having this conversation without the proper security scan."
He looked down and placed his hand flat on the desk, pulling himself roughly forward.
"Oh ^burn^ your precious security! Is that what all this is still about? Keeping the only members of a family apart just so you can keep this convenient conspiracy safe for another few centuries, just so you can further estrange our son and the rest of your children?!"
Funaho's hysterics were finely focused, hardly pausing when Azusa exploded up from his chair.
"Lady Funaho! Calm yourself this instant!"
"I will do no such thing!" She bellowed back and leaned forward on her side on the desk.
"This," Funaho pulled away to point at the document between them, the volume of her anger softened under its own weight "^this^ is the most despicable order I've ever seen you give. It's one thing to deceive your own children, but to tell a mother that she cannot be with her own child--- when that child may be-"
She hated that she was crying, and she hated the idea of looking away from the emperor. In the end she could avoid neither, giving Azusa a prime opportunity.
"Your emotions cloud your judgment again, my queen." He said it almost mockingly, snatching up the offending paper and sending a few others to the floor. "This order is meant to intervene before the same happens to Professor Hakube. There's no telling what disasters might result if she were to reject my authority as willingly as yourself."
Funaho lost her edge in seconds, bitter tears pulling her face down to the side like a helpless surrender. Taken aback by this sudden apparent victory, Azusa frowned into himself before he retook his seat.
"I am not worried about her spreading news of Ryoko's whereabouts; Galaxy Police Intelligence presents more of a threat." He closed his eyes and breathed, finding some small remaining patch of softness.
"In regards to our son: I meant what I said. I do not envision his unrivaled fame lasting forever, in fact I am almost happy to see the early signs of its end."
"You've spoken to her?" Funaho began, tentatively but tearless.
"What? Spoken to who?" The heat began to rise in the emperor's face again.
"To Washu, you've spoken with her about all this?"
"I thought I made that clear." His gruffness came more reflexive than functional. Easily ignored.
"What did she have to say about...all this, about Ryoko? What could have caused her to lash out like that?"
"It makes no difference, from what I have seen she is little more than a stunted child. But with her power there can be no room for tantrums. Professor Hakube would do well to concede failure on this project and move on to the next."
Azusa picked up the document and held it tightly enough to make it bow in his hand.
"She probably had some falling out with that ridiculous schoolboy she seemed so attached to."
"You mean your great grandson?" Funaho asked well above a whisper. She looked up and watched her husband's face begin to fold in on itself, when he showed no sign of responding she took a step forward with hands clasped across her chest.
"Lord Azusa, do not deny Washu access to her daughter."
Frustration was still a poor, then no cover for confusion as Azusa began to lower the paper back onto his desk.
"I'm not asking you," she continued, "I'm begging you."
Funaho's shoulders just passed the height of the desk as she went gracefully down on both knees and lowered her head to her husband. The mercy in her voice and the mercy it asked for spread into him, widening his eyes and even pulling his mouth agape.
"Do it, not for the invaluable ally you would gain in so brilliant a scientist. Do it for your hopelessly emotional wives, who have all but surrendered their lives and children to your every whim and ambition. Do it for the woman who wishes to keep loving you, not as a feared tyrant, but as a merciful leader."
Funaho raised her eyes without intent to melt pity from him, but with a final attack in a sincere surrender.
"Please, do not make another mother go without her child."
***
Priest Charming rode his faithful stone stairs down from the sunset.
Incense stick in hand, he slew the dragon that forgot its place as a good luck charm.
It screamed like a colic baby and bled sweet smoke.
Aged shrine patrons gathered around the body, showing off new toys and absorbent underclothes.
Their bragging turned desperate, then violent.
But He saved them. Like an arrogant God, He saved them with a hand gesture.
He looked at his seventh and last earth wife through her wedding veil.
She smiled doll beauty like a natural and kissed his cheek through the cloth.
A serpent's tongue whispered in his ear that they were all insects on crumbling stones.
Tsunami, as he'd originally envisioned her, stood giggling with Sasami.
She faced the little princess, pulling out a nervously happy smile and a small blade.
Sasami squealed and applauded with glee at the Seppuku performance.
When it was over his youngest sister stripped away the old Goddess's robe.
She twirled about in the blood soaked garment, laughing at how oversized it was.
The wind for such an occasion. The obese and crippled dog.
The world exterminated and replaced with koi ponds.
He imitated a madness laugh just for the sake of curiosity.
He imitated a madness laugh just for the sake of courtesy.
As Ryoko dug the gem from her wrist and dropped it dry on the floor.
As Washu floated behind her, adult in extravagant green, extending her hand over her daughters shoulder, letting the other two gems fall near the first.
Ryoko phased into the earth. The gems blew into dust over stones.
Washu looked him dead machine in the eye and tore out her hair, her scalp.
She cracked open her skull like a crab leg and emptied the contents like a powder keg.
He stood in fire, in stars, and outside the shrine office, looking impatiently at a wristwatch, waiting for something fancy to step out of oblivion with something clever and hideous to say.
No sign. Yosho watched the mirror smear him with a wide excrement-starved grin.
---
Sweaty sheets almost glued Yosho down as he sat up and choked for air. The pungent moisture stung his eyes as he tried to re-orientate himself amid the slowly descending string of gasps. He pulled the sticky hair away from his face and held it firmly to his head, shaking despite the heat.
All through the aftermath of Seita's ambition and eventual surrender, Yosho had expected and even waited for nightmares. But so far as he knew his sleep had been delayed but never interrupted. Even now this most recent string of visions was fading from memory, stealing away to be forgotten like the time since he'd last had such a dream. He looked out at the early sun and listened to the tranquility of tiny spring creatures.
When the breaths finally calmed enough for him to swallow against his dry husk throat, when the sweat was wiped from his eyes with a dry corner of his sheets, he rose. A long drink of water prepared him to meditate for himself and to pray for his family.
***
Heavy, marching, not-gonna-take it steps carried him farther and farther away from the house. It was clean, no one was fighting, his work was done. There were things to do outside, and if they didn't present themselves immediately then he'd simply hunt them down. Maybe have them replaced.
Tenchi had every intention of keeping his promise to 'Uncle', but there would be time after lunch, or after dinner, or maybe before breakfast tomorrow.
*But she hasn't joined any of the family meals for two days.
One more step toward the first extended root of the forest and Tenchi nearly doubled over. The gasp, the grunt, the grip at his belly, it worked no harder than any other pain but demanded more attention for it. He tried to take another step, just to steady himself, and the sensation increased like a choke chain attached to his home.
This ailment, first triggered by memories of Ryoko's desertion, then moments of intimacy with Aeka, now seemed to discipline his movements as well as his thoughts. He shook his head at the ground and looked over his shoulder. Sure enough, the organ grinder turned a little slower as he took a step back toward the house. Of course, this just made confusion fill in for pain in keeping his face twisted.
*I don't want to know.
The bitterness of the thought struck brass, swelled his throat in the sun, and pinched his cheeks and jaw into a single gutter. With hands clenched to shakes, he burst into himself, into his mind like a gnarled orphanage nun, to scream at whoever was making all the noise.
*Well I don't! I'm sick of wondering whose going to snap next, or who already has. I know that whatever's keeping Washu down there can't be good, and I bet it has something to do with her giving Ryoko a ship to abandon us with!
Gasp grunt grip. So, the pain under his hand had nothing to do with how far he went from the house. He let his arms hang and it spread up from chest into neck and face. Although white-knuckle fists did their part to distract him, they hardly hid the strain of jamming curses under the sensitive part of his breath. There was nothing beaten or joined in the way he let himself fall in with his thoughts. No, it was definitely just a way to guilt them away by finally giving them the raging inner argument they wanted. His mind had asked for it.
*That's right, she ^abandoned^ us! After all we've done, after all ^I've^ done to help her feel at home. What makes her think that she can just fly out on us when she starts losing her temper too much?! She wasn't the only one Seita tormented!
*She---she---she just wants us to feel sorry for her! That's all! She thinks running away will make ^her^ the victim instead of us! Even I know running never works.
Tenchi paused and widened his eyes, hypocrisy of thought burrowing like a torn grub. It took a while to reach his heart, long enough for the true experience to make itself known. The admission pushed out through his clenched teeth, the word 'betrayal'.
*Just another night of drama, then she disappears---she must have known she wouldn't find him. But how could she be so selfish: make everyone care about you, then worry about you, then leave?
*Well she can just stay and sulk wherever she is, her and Washu too. I've got a future, and I don't need crazy pirates or scientists making everyone else walk around on eggs through a minefield. Aeka loves me and I love her and it's taken me what seems like a lifetime to get to this point.
Iron tasted even worse without a pinch of dust.
*But---But I guess I won't be able to enjoy it till I just say:
*'I hope you're happy Ryoko! You made it a lot easier to love Aeka now! So where ever you are stay there and stay out of my head! And tell your mom that if she misses you so bad she should just join you!'
Tenchi, threw his fists out at his sides and scowled the sky black, ready to shout out the declarations he'd prepared. Then that pain, that weight; now he'd just have his knees. The ground wasn't much better than stone, though it invited the helpless and enraged rest of him to rest and cry a while. Not for all the money in the world---and for Ryoko?
*I risked my life, everyone's life, just to save her once, and this-
*What am I doing? I'll drive myself crazy. Ryoko's gone, and whether she abandoned us or tried to protect us, she's still gone.
He looked up at the house and swallowed-in a sincere weakness. His heartbeat pushed cooling tar through brittle veins.
*If I can't curse her out of my head---maybe Washu does know where she is, and I can get a real goodbye from her.
Slow to his feet and unconcerned with the dust on his knees, Tenchi began walking back to the house, not as quickly as he'd left it, but certainly more determined.
*If Washu doesn't know where she is, then I'll do my best and maybe we can help each other to---to let her go.
The pain was fading, but not without flashing aftershocks. A hard blink and a tilted head and Tenchi was even walking a little faster.
*And if it's not Ryoko that she's upset about then-
Tenchi's pace evened out and the wind removed itself from his path. When he looked up he was almost warlike.
*No. What else could it be?
***
Yosho had insisted on taking everyone out to lunch so that they could show him around the city. Tenchi and Washu were the only ones allowed the excuse of being busy. The back porch door had been left open to allow dust and bugs and maybe Tenchi and likely no one else to come and go as they pleased.
"Hello?" Tenchi called almost as loud as someone expecting an echo.
One hand on the handle, he pushed some leaves back outside with the side of his shoe. Still holding the door open, he bent and swept out the dirt from his shoe with his hand. He chided himself reflexively as he placed his shoes outside, forgetting to grumble at whoever had left the door open.
Tiny dust hairs danced in the window like locust-faeries; Tenchi only thought of muted television snow. He walked through it to the living room, knowing then where everybody had gone the way he couldn't forget why he'd come.
He wasn't trying to tempt one last distraction, or anything like that, but from the corner of his eye he spotted something on the middle ledge of the largest windowsill. It looked like a dust rag. A step closer and it looked like a stuffed animal. No, it looked like Ryo-ohki.
The cabbit didn't greet him with her usual meow, but she also wasn't sleeping as Tenchi had assumed the last few times he'd seen her. He imagined Sasami asking if she could smuggle her little friend into the big city, then heard Aeka's soft direction.
*'Just let her sleep Sasami.'
But, standing over Ryo-ohki now, he was sure she wasn't sleeping, unless she'd taken to sleeping without her usual tiny snore and with her eyes half open. Though her body seemed relaxed, her position certainly didn't look comfortable. Long hind legs should be flat and supportive or sprawled out lazily to the side, not spread out behind her like a swimming or road frog. And even when those ears were flopped down they didn't look this much like unraveling rags.
Tenchi felt his hairs find their end as he looked down at the patches of un-groomed fur, then the unblinking, dry and dimmed eyes. The weight returned with a few friends, and he began bending down before his knees could pull him faster.
"Ryo-ohki?"
The sound of Tenchi's own whisper killed any remaining delusion of a 'well-enough' cabbit. A numb lump gestated rapidly in his throat, feeding off the shadow denials, the dull repetitions that she wasn't dead. The muted shock of being too late readied itself to creep in, but he saw tiny lungs expand. Relieved for long enough to realize she wasn't responding, he reached out to pet a wild and likely dangerous dog.
"Ryo-ohki, are you sleeping?"
The cabbit closed her eyes mechanically. For a moment Tenchi thought she was trying to escape by better feigning unconsciousness, but the gesture turned out to be a very slow blink. She was looking right through him, had not heard him, and wasn't feeling his fingertips run between her ears.
He swallowed, pitiful stuff buoyed under his neck, but he barely felt enough moisture in his own eyes to blink with. One last thing might get through to her, it wouldn't, and he knew that it would crush him back to helpless size, but he tried anyway.
"I've got carrots, Ryo-ohki."
She breathed mechanically. Tenchi forced his eyes closed, not sure now if he was fighting tears back or squeezing them out. They were still dry when he opened them to pick her up in limply quaking hands. He'd cradled more life in waterlogged beanbag toys.
When they rose together he looked down and saw that the dust had settled over the cabbit, leaving an imprint on the windowsill. Like an inkblot, he tried hard to see an angel.
Tenchi walked toward Washu's lab one step at a time. He looked back down at his package; a memory of how easily loved Ryo-ohki was led to a memory of Ryoko's joke about the ship's egg. It felt like a confrontation to consider how responsible he felt for the little creature, how responsible he was for its mistress. Again it became excruciating to put each thought in its proper place. Soon, he hoped, he and Washu---and Washu needed help, and Washu would help.
The closet door stared back for long moments before Tenchi glanced again at the artificial little life in his arms, feeling how cold it was for lying in the sun, making sure he could feel its heartbeat. He adjusted to hold it in one hand so that he could knock. The door opened before he was ready, but slowly enough for him to step back. Washu crossed the threshold with arms folded and face beneath a shadow. Tenchi guessed that she had seen his feet first because she seemed surprised but not startled when she looked up. Her eyes were almost too drained to tell anything.
*'Oh, hi Washu. I was just coming down to see you.'
*'Hey Washu, we almost ran into each other there.'
Normal, typical, basically natural responses. A few more begged weakly to be put to work, each like near-used-up school supplies at the very top of a trashcan. Tenchi barely considered the reflex of picking them out, but it took another few moments to feel it more appropriate, maybe even easier, to ask a question straight out.
*'Where have you been, Little Washu.'
*'What's wrong with Ryo-ohki, Little Washu.'
But he knew the answer to the first one, and didn't know if he was ready to test his emerging theory on the second one. Washu now looked confused though, and gradually more frightened. He wondered how he looked to her, if it might be too soon for questions, if this might be the only chance he'd get for accusations. Apparently his own head got frustrated with all the options and let accidental honesty roll out the first composite.
"Grandpa asked me to talk to you."
Washu's eyes widened as her lip began to quiver slightly. She hugged the crab motif of her tattered bathrobe tighter and looked around either side of him. He considered telling her that everyone else was gone, but she lowered her head and answered for herself in a nervous hush.
"I thought he'd taken everyone with him to the city."
Too absorbed to even imagine how he'd convinced her of that, Tenchi focused instead on how Washu was disbelieving the small bundle almost balanced in one hand. He looked down as well, subtly extending his hands and weakening his voice.
"There's something wrong with Ryo-ohki."
Taking her invention from him like delicate explosives, Washu turned silently to the side. Tenchi watched her walk around him to the living room and felt his cells tense. Her slow movements were the last sands of an hour glass, the first steps of a doctor with bad news, but mostly the uncounted times he'd remembered those final shades of Ryoko's gold and pushed down a scream. And so for the second time he spoke without a head.
"It's Ryoko, isn't it?"
Washu froze, and though he knew he'd hit the target, pulled back the thick bandages for proper treatment, he couldn't move either. More memories, more than he knew there could be, they all had Ryoko's face and wanted to tear apart his mind piece by piece. Through the chaos of it he remembered what it felt like to lose control and remember Seita this way; the hatred that came wasn't as intense as this, but he wasn't even sure what emotion this was.
"Tenchi," Washu laid Ryo-ohki down on the couch's headrest. One ear held up for a second, then flopped all the way down just like the other, cutting the scientist off from whatever control she had left.
"My daughter, Tenchi-"
He pulled his eyes away from the pitiful cabbit when she whirled around. In the few hurried steps she took to reach him, she readied the explosion. To Tenchi's second surprise, he was still standing when she collided with him, dumbfounded as she griped his shirt and pulled her forehead into it. Her wail wasn't supposed to be quieted by a sob, but it was, and froze Tenchi's blood just the same.
"^She's losing her mind^!"
It took some more of her sobs to think straight enough to search, then some more to find the right way to hold her. As much as he wanted to spill wisdom, as much as he eventually wanted to join her, he couldn't. He stood there, not beside himself or surreally present, just frozen in helpless surrender to this locust cloud of memories, just praying like a child to be saved from it.
***
Aeka sat next to Tenchi with bent face and folded hands, long silent. After arriving back with everyone else she'd tried to hide her suspicions: Tenchi's blatant announcement that Washu would stay in her lab another night, the way he distracted her while she tried again to convince her sister that Ryo-ohki just wasn't feeling well, both had made his request to speak with her foreboding rather than promising. Now everyone else was asleep or far enough away. She didn't have to try to hide her suspicions. Now she was successfully hiding everything.
Tenchi had memorized the words he'd say to her, had said them, and was now repeating them to himself again, all the while waiting for a sign of life from his princess.
*'Aeka, I did talk to Washu today. I'm sorry I lied but you're the only other person I want to know about this. She knows where Ryoko is, and she says that she's sick. She needs my help.'
*'I'll act like I'm leaving for school tomorrow, but I'll actually be going with Washu in her other spare ship. That's all I know.'
He hadn't slipped, hadn't even hesitated before the word 'sick' like he'd feared he would. But in context he thought Aeka might figure out the metaphor, might ask if 'she needs' meant Washu, or Ryoko. He was actually surprised at how calm he'd been. Of course, now the snap was more than ready.
The enduring silence made room to curse himself for not working his love for the princess into the report. So what if it would have brought along implications that he 'still' loved her? It wasn't hard to tell her he loved her now, it was just hard to tell her the right way. As a matter of fact, he should break this agonizing silence and tell her right now. Well, what was he waiting for?
Tenchi closed his eyes and kept them shut. He searched for a happy memory of Aeka that would not give him slightly less than an intense flashback of Ryoko. He was still searching when Aeka spoke.
"How long will you be gone?"
Her characteristically soft voice didn't quite grab him as much as it would have had it come from a mute, but it was in the same garden. Tenchi swung his eyes open toward her, almost asking her to repeat herself. He stopped soon enough to give her an answer, but not long enough to consider whether it should be so straightforward.
"I don't know, maybe...I don't know."
He saw her eyes travel upward into his, large and delicate enough to inspire an attempted salvation.
"Washu didn't tell me." Tenchi was glad he didn't gulp, but didn't know if he was glad when Aeka looked back down at her hands. He certainly wasn't glad for the next stretch of silence.
"I know you'll do what you think is right, Lord Tenchi."
Her voice hadn't changed. Although Tenchi knew she was not speaking her mind entirely, he didn't look up, not even when he heard the couch move and felt her breath next to him. Only when she asked him to be careful with a kiss on the cheek did he flinch, and only after she was halfway up the stairs did he turn around to speak. He'd taken a breath and opened his mouth and everything, but that was all.
***
The next morning Tenchi turned around to see Aeka standing in the doorway, barely ten meters away. She'd already given him his goodbye hug in the kitchen, along with Sasami and Mihoshi, but there she was again, looking at a ship bound for war. In the steps it took for her to reach him it was obvious that she refused to run or cry. As she encircled his neck and pulled his face alongside hers, Tenchi didn't drop his book bag to hold her with both arms. He did hold her unreasonably tight with the free one. He tried listening equally close when she spoke into his ear.
"I'll be here when you return, Tenchi."
Aeka let him go and stepped back. He looked at her as she stood with head down and hands folded, waiting to receive reassurance or punishment. She was beautiful, she adored him, and in a slow blink he remembered every peaceful and romantic moment they'd shared together, uninterrupted by gold fevers or demon calls. It was an entirely new experience, and what she'd said to him; she'd meant to add 'I love you', so after he turned away he told himself to respond in kind to that.
"I know."
It was not until he heard the door close behind him that the tidal waves broke, carrying him to Washu's meeting place on strip of skin at a time.
***
The ship was little even for Washu and especially for the two of them. Though Tenchi's knees pressed into metal a few times, he knew he couldn't complain. Apparently the ship had to be almost entirely rebuilt simply to accommodate another person---outside its cargo port. He'd foolishly asked about any other ships and taken her no-response as deserved.
That had been a very silent hour ago. The second half of it was initially spent enjoying an empty sea of stars, but the last quarter was wasted wishing for those big ugly planets to pass by again. Tenchi looked up at Washu's faint reflection in the windshield. Even beneath the shadow of her hair he recognized stone.
*Did she get that robot double of hers to play chauffer.
Tenchi leaned forward, wincing at the pain in his knees, and thought he saw the reflection stretch unassumingly, perhaps picking something out of its teeth.
*No. Why would she do that?
For the length of a vapor trail he considered a more troubling option, the kind he'd spent months of willpower to banish. It wormed its arguments deeper the more he closed his eyes to force it out. He told himself not to think about Washu's behavior, and definitely not to remind himself that he'd brought the sword. No. The only things he'd allow into his head were ways to preserve their spirits. Talking was the first and likely the easiest choice.
"Washu?"
"Yes, Tenchi?"
He paused to hear her echo his short voice, then allowed himself to be nervous so long as he wasn't rude.
"Will you tell me where we're going now?"
Washu didn't allow herself to be either.
"The Blue Rah Jin system."
"Oh."
Tenchi watched his reflection crinkle the opposite side of his mouth. Much as he wanted to cover up his blunt ignorance with sarcasm, it didn't look like it was in him.
"Where is that, exactly?"
"Just through this artificial worm hole."
His legs cramped and his head thumped as he rose from his seat with a start. The pains were put on hold as he stared into the black tunnel swallowing them up with so many threads of blue light.
When Tenchi had gone through one of these in Aeka's ship she'd turned off the viewing areas. The side reflection of Washu's face was eerily illuminated by the color racing around them, yet nothing changed in the external comfort of their travel. He looked around to every angle he could and gradually deflated his awe. A few blue lights slicing through a large black tunnel, certainly nothing to induce a dangerous seizure, hardly psychedelic, not even that long.
Fair, silent stars again, and plain understanding in Washu's voice.
"Don't worry Tenchi, we'll be there in just a few more hours."
Sight-searching continued long after Tenchi realized he wouldn't be seeing anything. He'd have to pick up where he'd been interrupted, or better yet, where he'd misfired. That meant not thinking about Seita, which was a glad given, and it meant thinking about Ryoko, which was unavoidable regardless of anything.
"When you told me what was going on, I asked what you wanted me to do without even thinking---but all you did was arrange this little outing."
Washu allowed her silence to let him encourage himself.
"You said that Ryoko was---was losing her mind. You-"
Tenchi had to tell himself to breath, had to force the air in at knifepoint if need be. That was the cure-all, the only way to slow the thoughts and keep them clear at the same time. He hadn't heard the official diagnosis in his own voice yet, but it didn't take a second for him to start wishing for some shock, the kind that was supposed to numb you when something unimaginable was happening to a friend or more. The ship was too small to lose control in, so he'd have to keep talking, keep swallowing and crushing it all down with blessedly clean artificial air.
"What do you expect me to do about it?"
And he'd asked that in the wrong tone and the weight crushed him and the vacuum was better than this. Washu's silence eventually made Tenchi look over to make sure her face was still a stone in the glass. It was.
"Washu?"
"Whatever you can, Tenchi. Nothing more."
Maybe she'd meant to add 'nothing less', but clearly she'd exhausted more encouragements than he had. This should have helped, or at least inspired.
"But Washu, I'm not ^any^ kind of doctor."
It hurt, Tenchi couldn't believe it could hurt this much to sound like a coward, and likely an emotional cretin. Soon as he worked that pill down he needed another to consider how the response must have actually struck.
"I may have let on that she was in a hospital, or some kind of recovery clinic, but that is only true in a technical sense."
Tenchi watched her head bow forward a little, assuring himself that robots couldn't show emotion, much less hide it like this.
"The reality is that she's in a holding unit that I designed millennia ago. They're for holding beings with powers beyond the restrictions of basic matter. I can guarantee you that the only 'doctors' that have seen her, that will see her; they're singularly interested in chemical treatments-"
Washu caught a sharp breath, but released it before it could cut its way out.
"If anyone's going to design a medication for my daughter, it's going to be me."
"Have you?" Tenchi asked after almost enough hesitation to end the matter.
"I can't, Tenchi."
Apparently she felt the disbelief welling up behind her.
"The clearest answer I can give you is that I don't think I'll have access to her indefinitely. The real reason, though---I'm not sure I can explain it"
Tenchi wanted to say that he understood. He thought he did anyway, as he barely had to think about it. Fooling around with Ryoko's chemistry was dangerous on any level, but no, it was more than that. He didn't know if he could explain it either, but it definitely had something to do with the weight, the one that still hadn't gone away.
"I do have a theory, Tenchi, though I doubt you'll like it."
"Go ahead." He welcomed her willingness to speak, even if he shared her doubt.
"Her breakdown," Washu began with a crushed sigh, "started manifesting before she left. But I still thought some time alone would help, because it all seemed connected with Seita---and with you."
"Me?!"
Washu's pause lasted long enough for Tenchi to feel small for more than the crack in his voice.
"I noticed this distinct emotional energy in her ^before^ Seita. It wasn't as intense, but it was definitely the same one that's consuming her now."
When put so plainly it was hard to argue, even hard to question. Tenchi realized that he'd been resting his forehead against the back of Washu's seat only after the metal made a decent imprint.
"I'm sorry, Tenchi."
He took his hands away from the semi-permanent crease in his brow, sure that she couldn't be crying and sure that he still shouldn't much breathe.
"I'm not trying to say that you 'drove' Ryoko to this. She crashed my ship, destroyed that GP hanger, and let herself be captured, all of her own accord."
Washu gulped, then tilted her head as Tenchi made a similar sound.
"Sorry if I'm adding that part in too abruptly. Don't worry, no one was killed."
She waited for him to make another sound, even looked to where she figured he was watching her reflection.
"What-" she swallowed thickly, "what I'm trying to say is that Ryoko isn't out for vengeance, or even attention; she means to surrender. That's the emotional energy I've been picking up from her, that's what's letting her consciousness shut down. She's giving up."
Tenchi listened to Washu's sobs rattle against the cage bars of her breathing. He finally felt his throat loosen, the numbness setting another mercy in over his wailing memories.
*Maybe its not numbness, maybe its just more pain I don't know how to respond to.
Barely hearing himself over Ryoko's varied declarations, he spoke in monotone.
"So what you want me to do is go and talk to her, get her to snap out of it."
Barely able to think through the wastes of gold, he glanced over for Washu's response. Her reflection closed its eyes.
"And you want me to do it because you think she values what I have to say more than anybody."
He watched the path of Washu's tear, not waiting for her to respond this time.
"Because you think-"
"Tenchi, I---I don't claim to know anything about your heart, and I wouldn't intentionally come between what you and Aeka are making, and-"
"Washu," Tenchi sternly reclaimed his moment away from fear; even he couldn't believe she'd attempt diplomacy after so much.
"Don't you have a telepathic link with her?"
"Yes, but that doesn't-"
"I think she tried to form one with me."
"She what?"
"Washu, right now, the closer we get to this place, the harder it is for my mind to focus on anything else---and I think I might even be seeing some of her memories."
Tenchi's monotone wavered slightly
"And I know when something like this happened before---it was right before that fight with Dr. Clay---and Zero. I remember feeling, for just a second, like she'd called out right into my mind----a little while before Zero showed up. And then, before you merged Zero and Ryoko together, Zero, she was doing the same thing, calling into my mind, moving this awful weight on top of me."
It was a simple tactic, take angry before you lose faith, and it seemed almost too simple for Washu.
"Tenchi, when I merged them, I had hoped that Zero's components, the emotions it suddenly gained, would help my daughter. But-" Washu sucked in a sharp breath and bit down on "it looks like it may have been too much after all."
"Washu," Tenchi began anew in the best sympathetic subject changer he could manage, "she didn't mean to desert us, did she?"
"Desert you," Washu sniffed, "no, of course not."
"She left, and she let herself get locked up so that she wouldn't hurt anybody. Then, I guess, when she gave up the idea of seeing anyone again--- she just gave up everything."
"That's pretty much my theory." Washu almost sounded calm after another good throat flex.
Tenchi breathed again, feeling his jaw quiver at new visions of how Ryoko might have changed.
"She's not---^dangerous^, is she?"
Washu was silent for much longer than he expected, then longer than he was comfortable with, but finally answered sincerely.
"She still needs at least one gem to survive. She can make temporary ones over long periods of time, but at the moment she has the same one you gave back to her."
"Alright---and she's in a cell she can't break out of?"
"Well yes, but, you have to go inside it to speak to her."
Tenchi's breaths were silent and Washu's follow-up was hushed.
"Inside---there's nothing to move around for."
---
The hospital appeared in the distance, a collection of dull ivory boxes resting on a huge asteroid. Its iron glowed onyx near imbedded propulsion engines. Tenchi raised his eyes in time to see that it was nearly half the size of Earth's moon, but he didn't really look at it. All he could see was all he could feel: the protective numbness ready to split at the seams again. He hoped Washu wouldn't take his controlled tone for too much a shield or separation.
"However she feels, however I feel, we've been through too much for me to forsake her now."
Tenchi waited for Washu to respond, then let himself hope for her to respond well. Eventually they pulled into the dock and she spoke almost as calmly as he had, assuming correctly that they were assuring themselves more than each other.
"We're here."
***
Tenchi looked around the dock for other ships. There was what looked like another one, shaped like a zeppelin, about a quarter mile away by the size of the people walking around it. Apart from that, everything was slightly more alive than the vacuum. He glanced over his shoulder at Washu's ship again, still unable to see inside.
When she'd begun telling him where to go and how to use the access card, he'd thought it was just a formality. Quickly enough he realized she did not intend to go in with him. He might have actually assumed that the only thing holding her back was a one person per card rule, had she not admitted otherwise. The conversation kept his first steps toward the facility.
*'Just hold that card up to the scanner on the right of the transport station, the one straight ahead. It will take you where you need to go. There will be guards in an observation room, just tell them Professor Hakube sent you, and show them the card. You'll have to walk to the cell at the very back, on the right, and hold the card up again to its connection tube. Try not to make any noise before you're inside.'
*'I understand...guess these passes are pretty hard to get, huh?'
The attempted joke had fallen so flat on Washu's face that he wondered if he'd broken some security rule by speaking of it.
'If you make any progress I'll be able to tell from out here---I need some time to collect myself.'
As Tenchi held up the card and stepped into the transporter he experienced a new anxiety, even though he'd anticipated every aspect of its rise. The notion that Washu needed to take a 'break' from seeing her own daughter drove his heart into the ground, but even as it bored into magma the moment of impact repeated. He knew she could see him in the transporter's lights, even from the football field between them. When his vision and atoms went blurry he tried to stand as straight as possible.
***
The guards had been ready for violence when they first saw him enter their work station, hands on their weapons, eyes boring into his. After displaying the card and giving the name, however, they'd looked ready to roll out the red carpet as soon as they found their biohazard suits. He'd held Jurian energy at the door they directed him to, and wondered if perhaps he should have requested a protective suit of his own.
Within a moment of gaining access to what he imagined was the most secure facility in the galaxy, he felt appropriately insecure. The high amount of white for the absence of obvious light was unnerving in and of itself, but Washu had not spent much time preparing him for how nightmarish the actual holding units were. Every silent sway and undulation almost served to distract his fear rather than fester it, almost. Surely such an environment could not be helping her dilemma. It could be similar to Seita's dimension in there for all he knew.
For all his past heroism he nearly stumbled to turn back toward the door.
He could scarcely see its outline, and was at a loss to position the observation room those guards were watching him from, waiting for him to come back in pieces. Just to be safe, certainly not to simplify the bet they must have placed between themselves, he checked their intercom or whatever they had here.
"Huh---Hello!"
Hoping to have hollered enough to drown out that first gasped-stutter, and to be heard, Tenchi was soon glancing about in every direction for a camera or microphone or robotic arm to yank him out of this place if worse came to impossible.
For some kind of reflex he held the card out, then high enough to see himself purely black and white under seamless lamination.
*You don't have to go in there, Tenchi. You can turn back now, go home and start a new life with Aeka. Think about it, how much trouble has this pirate already caused you? Why let yourself get sucked into her---to her---
Tenchi closed his eyes on warm tears. Even what might have passed for rationality, what might have preserved him so many times before, it carried as much weight now as a wet sheet of paper.
But it was draped over his remaining courage; a pencil, held between his middle and ring finger, and this sheet might tear and plop to the ground.
The memories were heavy machinery hammers, and her invisible cries for salvation were oozing from that bubble, that unnatural boil.
Aeka's kiss was a shard of hot shrapnel, swallowed with soft fruit and imbedded in his throat. He clutched at it and may have felt each edge for he couldn't deny the wavering in his knees, the draining of his resolution. Within seconds he could believe in being petrified.
The choice hadn't been made for him. The war for his heart was not over, but it would be soon, and the final battles would be even more horrific than he'd imagined. It curdled his stomach then but he was helpless; the passing stone of apathy, the one that had overwhelmed Ryoko's will. He hated himself for thinking it now, of all times, felt like slapping some strength into the child whining in his head. How could he ask blindly for deliverance to some easier position, to blamelessly abstain.
He looked at the card again, his eyes red even in a colorless reflection. By the time he considered asking Tsunami for strength, he was already convinced that he didn't deserve it.
Tenchi lifted the card closer to his face, the two thin black circles over an empty white surface fitting around his eyes like a mask. Emotional exhaustion was setting in, taking away his ability to sort through the two women screaming over the head of that frightened little boy. He saw Ryoko shivering with delusion in a corner and it made him bend sharply. On the way back to a moderate slouch he saw what Aeka had dreamed she'd do if left behind for the sake of a demon.
Then he saw that face, twisted upward in the grotesque perfection of vanity- wielded madness. A god-ghost's eyes consume and create everything, then All in a long laugh, in a hiss of cruelty.
It was a shower of ice water for the players in his mind, tearing bones out, erasing the memory of senses, and leaving him only a raw mind.
His child had something to cry about now; some of those last words had made a place.
*'---the woman who will love you---the woman who you will love.'
The card weighted down his hand, then closed it tight. The bastard of Kagato and Death spread its bones over Tenchi's shoulder and drooled onto his neck.
"HE-YA!"
The sword was brilliant and ready to kill before he felt it in his hand.
Five hard breaths and he focused his vision on nothing but more horrid cell-like prisons.
*This---is ^not^ The Genius.
This wasn't Seita, Tenchi told himself, even though it was using a voice he might favor, a practiced clarity from living between ancient conquest tomes since before their publication.
*WHHHAT!
Five identical putrid voices bubbled up from a single mouth, from a couple cells over. A different consciousness, but it also directed itself into his head.
Seita never spoke this way...and nothing Washu could build could hold him.
*Who would sneak in here after so long?
The third voice was about as close, as directly positioned in his mind, but it sounded more like it might have a human shape.
The sweat ran into his eyes, his mouth. And Tenchi began backing toward Ryoko's cell. He hadn't believed how important silence had been, but he didn't think of speaking.
*^So^, a Jurian mutt has also come to see that ^measly^ ^menace^.
The first voice sharpened its teeth against pestilent leather.
*Has Hell finally split its chrysalis? Have yet the Old Ones come to claim their glory?!
The second voice melted, and the slime fashioned crude organs in perversion's memory. Acutely aware of each other, the first two invaders in Tenchi mind synchronized their feast on his terror. It seemed their own excitement blinded them just enough to let him keep moving.
*Is this ^boy^ a servant, come to claim all---who bear HIS touch, HIS mark?!
*Do you know child, who's ^reek^ we were able to sense upon her?
*And it was on her ^mother^, too. Indeed, how can you gain ^her^ access?
Tenchi knew his sword might accidentally free these voices, loosing them to consume suns. He should put it away and silence his thoughts as soon as he finished fighting in this next breath. Seita's eyes made a kaleidoscope for every memory.
*What's this?
*...Ohhhhhhhhh
*Of course. ^Your^ essence is tainted as well.
*YESSS! The Ghost of Madness has-had-his waywithyou!
*It has taken us some ^time^ to move our thoughts beyond these prisons, but your world-ravaging ^harlot^, even her ancient-genius-mother--- they will speak with us soon!
*YESSS! They have drank of his venom, they may even know where his plague has blown him.
Almost as fluidly as he'd unsheathed it, Tenchi put the sword away and turned with hands set together. He'd clear his thoughts before whatever they were scrapped them up.
*Wha---thi---he---he can---^us^?
*All---ee of you! You'll tell us where-
*ENOUGH!
No longer able to think clearly, Tenchi stopped trying to clear his thoughts, like he might drop a sword in the face of a tank.
He couldn't sense the other two voices, but he instantly remembered the third.
*Fool boy.
Tenchi didn't know if he should consider responding to something with so familiar an energy.
*They are older even than I, but on this plane their powers are--- vulgar.
*Do not try to speak, you were at least conscious enough to know to clear your thoughts.
Swallowing in the bravest way he could, Tenchi began walking toward his destination again.
*The one they speak of, from what little they could force upon me--- he is impossible, do you hear?
*They say they taught him much, and in return he made them bold.
*Too bold.
*Do you hear me...little Jurian?
He passed the third voice, and was now closer to Ryoko. Yet still he felt the presence in his mind like the principles hand on his shoulder for some unknown reason.
*Little---no, no it can't be! I was ^there^! I was too old for the position even then, but I was ^there^!
Tenchi tried to use Ryoko as a beacon, this voice was not a friend.
*Our savior! No! You do ^not^ go to see what you believe! Tsunami-- -he, She gave his life to ^save us^ from her!
*FOOL BOY!
In a grip about the neck that meant a strike in the face, Tenchi saw the war. The army, he recognized quickly, was Jurian. Its general had known great status, its general was old and terribly powerful. He began laying waste to the many-armed and other limbed adversaries, screaming 'heathen', screaming 'Tsunami's wrath', incinerating enemy and Jurian alike in a frenzy.
*Do not try to defy ^me^! You---you Lie, you ^trick of blood^!
And Tenchi walked faster, and fought harder to lock the intruder out.
*He is not----She is not---give yourself to---
It was that day, that beginning, the empty ship, the thoughts cleared before death. He had to block this madman out.
*--nami---please---
The card was still in his hand. Tenchi closed his eyes and tried to make his grandfather proud.
*---its---don't---
His own breath, again, and again out. The room had never changed, but it was quiet once more.
The card nestled itself into the creases it'd left in his hand, not a feather of movement as the threads of light came to touch the gates, to bring him to judgment.
***
It had been nauseating and nothing like a tube, but once outside the little cabin the atmosphere felt pleasantly cool. An open field with a breeze from every impossible direction made its vibrating ground less than unsetting. But again Tenchi stopped to look for the light source when he recognized it as the same fuzzy gray lingering outside.
Holding the card up to the final door between them, Tenchi held his breath like an amateur. Everything was absolutely muted now, but holding the card up again was no easier. Then and again he tilted back toward Tsunami's help but, whatever kept him reconsidering, it was more than the general's example. Where all the riches failed, the only gold in the universe eventually took him off his guard and lifted his hand.
The sliding door was no more elegant than a supermarket's. The bed was hardly a cot, its sheets and pillows emerging from boxes at either end like tissues. There were multiple strands and tufts of hair lying about the floor. They did not look fresh, nor did the tiny bits of discolored mater. Dried saliva and other mostly clear fluids crusted the debris down in some places. In the left corner Tenchi could see feet, one rubber slipper halfway on. Knowing to look at her one piece at a time, he tried to see the 'living' space as just the way a messy person like Ryoko would leave it.
It really should have created a malady of different smells, if not one overpowering overshadowing soap smell, but instead there only seemed to be a single stench. Organic as morning mouth film on tin teeth, it gently burned down his nostrils and around his throat. He was beginning his first look at her now, so he couldn't really tell if it made his eyes water.
Emaciated twists of vein and bone stacked against each other; the bleached turquoise pants weren't made to fit anyone. Her shirt was long, its wrinkles old, and enough of it bunched up to show ribs stretching creamy yellow blotches across her skin. A sun-dried mantis arm dangled over one knee, having curled tight around it for too long. The way Ryoko's hair slopped over her head and face, a sky blue baby blanket left behind in a sewer rat's nest, it was hard to tell how the pieces on the floor had come loose.
In seven steps around seven minutes Tenchi was standing directly over her, neither blocking the air nor casting a shadow.
The first two steps had been wordless, though far from silent as he fought to breath or blink, to not bury his face in his hands. The third whispered out Ryoko's name, softer than the delicate footing that would have made her look up if she were awake. On his fourth her name was loud and clear and pitiful as a child holding up a once adorable road-victim for parental fix- all.
A few progressively emotional words were well wasted on the way to the fifth.
"Ryoko, it's me, Tenchi."
"Ryoko, please, answer me. What are you doing here?"
A quarter into this fifth step came the first stoop of Tenchi's posture, matching well the desperation pulling at his throat.
"You don't have to do this, Ryoko. Whatever happened, we all forgive you. We all want you to come home."
"^I^ want you to come home."
Thinking it would help, halfway into the fifth step Tenchi worked some strength into his voice. It might have helped him and only him, and only a little.
"Ryoko. I know everything that's happened, I know why you think you have to stay here, and you ^don't^. I can't just let you give up, not after all we've made it through."
Tenchi's quick motion to wipe away his tears gave him time enough for the first wave speech to finish or spare him. Just before the next step, he fell back on an almost whiny but more than sincere voice.
"I ^care^ about you, Ryoko. No matter what happens, I never want to see you locked away again. Please believe me."
The sixth was silent as paralysis, and, for a step forward, it was almost better. Tenchi just let his eyes and jaw quiver. Ryoko hadn't changed her shallow breathing, just as she hadn't signaled that she heard anything at all. The shock of what was left of her bored deeper, a block of iron forced into the virgin sand, blunt end first. All the hesitation pains he'd felt with Aeka were like the first pebbles of an avalanche.
Tenchi breathed her name again on the seventh, the lowest whisper for the final step equally ignored. So short a distance destroyed his knees, but it was unimportant, as Tenchi began speaking in a near moan for too many sobs at once.
"Don't you understand? I can't leave you here like this."
He timidly reached out to touch her shoulder, then pulled back. Ryoko's skin was icy and unresponsive a few centimeters away from actual contact.
"Ryoko, I-"
The next outreach moved even slower, pushing through a thick sea of visions. Tenchi's teeth clattered a few times, thinking on the strange warmth he felt at Ryoko's reckless embraces, stranger for how much more intense it was when they were invited, stranger still for how he always thought it to be discomfort. He reached her shoulder and held to it, lowering his head for tears that were going to be too large.
Seita's guide through her dreams replayed itself, holding his blood hostage, that Ryoko could be happy so long as she could see him happy. But here she was blind.
Tenchi's thoughts burst over themselves, drenching his blood back, all into his chest as he recalled that second time together with a demon in the cave. Her dawning surrender offered to him like more than a heart on silver; and all he could consider was his own possible escapes. Thus he forgot the needles in his joints and reached for Ryoko's other shoulder.
"I'm sorry," his face and voice collapsed inward, "I'm sorry for everything."
He pulled her limp form into him, feeling her hair tickle, then indent between her clammy forehead and his burning cheek.
"Dammit Ryoko! Whatever I've done, whatever I've done to make you think-"
And it was everything he'd done, every last thing he'd said or restricted, each possibility for shame washed in.
*'Please hurry back, my Tenchi'.
She let him go that day. Even if Ryo-ohki had been watching, she'd let him go.
*And I'd hardly given her a glint of hope that it wouldn't leave her behind.
*'Don't take anything from anyone'.
The rave, pulsing music into adrenaline light, all the joy he felt dancing with her and simply watching her dance, its syringe pressed deep.
*She---she thought I meant not to ^steal^. How could I be so blind?!
*And then---and then I acted more concerned for how she might break something than for how scared she must have been.
*That blindfold must have reminded her of-
*'It was cold in there---and ^dark^'.
*Oh gods.
*'Nothing seems worth doing, but I still manage to do plenty of damage'.
Tenchi held tighter and began rocking her into his sobs.
"Please! Ryoko! It's Tenchi! Speak to me!"
That was basically what it sounded like, ringing wet through his head.
By emotion's immunity from explanation and bias for unyielding, Tenchi felt something like exhaustion and stopped thinking in terms of regret or sympathy. His plight, no longer about 'getting through' to Ryoko, became the sole drive; he had to be at her side, comfort her through every pain. He had to be a presence more than a hero.
"Ryoko."
He held her in one arm, faintly remembering Zero's last moments, though there was now half the confusion and twice the agony. With his free hand he smoothed and smeared back enough of Ryoko's hair to open her face to him.
Another sob twisted his face, this one truly too large to escape. Ryoko's face looked dead, even with the breathing. The gold poured straight at him and the universe for nothing. Her lips hung open thinly, cracks of skin waved under her shallow breaths. Film turned to crust, pointing away from the corners of her mouth and into a few drained and dented wrinkles. Tenchi was closing his eyes again, ready to lean back into her, when life tore them open with a gasp.
"^Ten---chi^."
Clear and weak as would be expected from the mid-level above death, Ryoko had managed one word.
"Ryoko! I'm here Ryoko, talk to me, please!"
Tenchi smoothed some more of her hair back and gulped, realizing how close they were, that he was looking directly into her eyes and still missing the faintest glimmer of life. She remained silent long enough for him to convince himself he wasn't hallucinating, and that Ryoko was not gone yet. If this could be the only time he'd feel so focused, so undivided: so be it.
So he acted. He reached through the weight in his chest, through the complete collection of dense memory, and struck at what he hoped to be both pieces of the same heart. That would have to be enough.
"I'm here, Ryoko."
Exhausted monotone vibrated in Tenchi's self as he clamped his eyes shut, relaxed them slightly, and moved. Sleeping princesses lied differently. A new bride would have been warm. A captured obsession could never hurt like this.
And he pressed more of his life on, the scratchy peels of dried skin, the slick musk of hair, he'd breach the commitment seen only in dreams.
Air came easily enough, eventually, no great struggle, and no profound reflex to gently wipe away more of his tears and her hair. She stared back at him unchanged and answered unaffected.
"^Ten---chi^."
"Yes, Ryoko. Its me." Tenchi replied to himself, his voice failing before the vision of a world still dead.
She pronounced his name again, then again, then in slow repetition. It began to sound so much like a broken record that Tenchi waited for a needle scratch of silence, or preferably a sanitizing scream from anyone. For the first time Ryoko truly felt like a machine, a worn and worthless appliance, working with only enough action to beg its owner for the heap.
The search continued, hardly more alive than her voice. Tenchi tried to picture his eyes becoming advanced microscopes to pinpoint a remaining glint of the real Ryoko. The chant wore him away like a sand pile amid the tide, leaving him to bury his face deeper into her hair. Silent cries jerked his body and made Ryoko's already pale flesh impossibly whiter beneath his desperate grasp. For a time that was his own, he'd randomly rock her and shake his head, creaking joints and sweeping hair into different tangles.
Tenchi's world remained uncounted even when no longer followed by the mantra of his name. Silence and stillness before the tone-light of a card would take just more than seven minutes. The muted gauntlet tried with and without a prayer, and the watchmen let theirs be interrupted, but didn't lift an eye.
***
They made eye contact once, from across the docking port. Both of them mouthless as they cramped back together. Halfway through the Earth's atmosphere Tenchi did not open his eyes from the requisite blink. After so many times he still couldn't grind them like teeth, or weld them together. There should have been tears, at least some crack in his throat or face, but who was he to interrupt the dull hum of wind and distant jets outside the hidden flight dock.
Inside it was small and hushed as a real secret, the ship's echoes were swallowed by the dark. Washu climbed down first, every step. Tenchi followed and moved just enough to pass her without seeming to try as a weight made him look slower than he actually was. Some steps away he stopped and half-turned back. Washu looked up but could not see his eyes, even though he wasn't slouched. He handed her the access card and began to leave again.
"Tenchi."
He stopped.
"Thank you, I know you did all you could."
Tenchi shifted his feet under the absent wind, while Washu's sleeves betrayed the subtlety of her movements.
"I'm sorry Washu," Tenchi found something before emotion, "there was nothing I could do," then something after, "and---and I just can't think of anyone else who could help her now."
Washu missed the unusual lack of pride in such a statement. She merely looked at the pure white access card, tracing her thumb around one of its thin black circles. Tenchi's next step away was stopped short. The adult scientist was too tired to be silent when she spoke to herself.
"I can."
I thank all the owners of the Tenchi characters who have chosen not to sue me for suggesting some alternative uses for them.
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Tenchi Muyo: Sanctuary and Asylum
-Verse Fourteen is Empathy-
-Part 1-
Bare these necessities, a martyr's teeth.
Embrace for the big bang break.
Turn karma to masochism, all for Us.
Put the selves out and up and at stake.
-ZJS
Queen Funaho's reflection blurred on four surfaces like three dimensions. The rare petrified wood was a treasure that only Jurains could access and not even Jurians could duplicate. And yet if the general public ever discovered how much truly existed its market value would shift dramatically. Wide enough for an escort on each arm and tall enough to give a child a shoulder ride, this tunnel had connected Tsunami's chamber to the emperor's quarters since Jurai. Now, after the advent of teleport stations, it remained one of few dramatically long passages left in the entire palace. Queens were oft more apt to appreciate and utilize its contemplative quality, thus for generations they had been the ones to kept it.
Funaho didn't want to reconsider anything; she wanted to surprise her husband. She wasn't rushing past an even pace, and she didn't hold the scroll in her fist like a crumpled sword; it merely waved and flapped at her side, breaking the rhythm of her steps.
Confident from the moment she opened the passage, she'd hoped to be even more assured at the other end. Everything remained constant till the door to Azusa's study.
She wished she'd had the time to seek her sister queen's support, just as she knew she would.
"Well isn't this a surprise." Funaho could see the emperor's smile even as he remained bent over his papers, likely remembering the romantic inspiration behind her last use of the passage.
A dignified wife breathed away any hopeless emotional mixes and strode up to his desk.
"Could you please explain this?" She spread her thin document over the others with a fresh coat of ice.
Azusa merely read, then answered it with a new sheet of steel.
"This is a royal order revoking Professor Washu Hakube's access to any and all patients at the fourth galactic sanitarium."
Funaho slapped her husband with such force that she instinctively looked at her palm to see if his beard had cut. There was redness, followed by a slight throbbing that spilled fire down the tendons of her arm and into her chest. She'd never struck another person in all her life, but shock, guilt: both faded and were forgotten. In strong or better than stubborn silence, she waited for the repercussions of her heinous act, blinking once to stand like a tree but not like wood.
Azusa did not rise from his chair or even lean back in it. He breathed a barely or overly forced calm to turn his head downward again. Funaho glared to make sure he was truly reexamining the document.
"It seems it did not reach its intended destination."
He held the paper up by its top edges. When he looked over at Funaho she remembered the last time she'd challenged his authority. This time the force behind her sought to shame rather than subdue.
"Anyone who aids in the interception of a message sent by the emperor," Azusa began, "can be tried for treason."
Back amid the suppressed shivers, the cries for surrender and pleas of forgiveness, something made its presence known in Funaho's self. It was the same thing that had strongly suggested she question her husband's decision, the one that had commanded she undercut his authority, and the one that now justified violence. She turned to him as if to bow, but remained starring down at a boy who was now ready to have his punishment explained.
"There are Jurains here who would readily lay down their lives for me, even to defy their emperor."
She watched the accusing stare drain from Azusa's eyes, leaving only restrained shock.
"They stand ready for the consequences of their actions, just as I do. And though they are in no position to explain, I am," she narrowed her eyes, "if you are."
"None of this should be necessary." The voice of the galaxy's most powerful emperor grew tired as he set the document down and pushed away from his desk. Funaho kept his shock warm for him as he continued, one hand massaging his eyes.
"Ryoko attacked and destroyed a large portion of a Galaxy Police station. Although by some miracle no one was seriously injured, she showed every capacity for further destruction. This time we found no evidence that she was being controlled by any outside force. There was no other course of action available to me than to have her incarcerated in the best facility possible."
He breathed, deciding if he'd wait for her to reply, and deciding against it.
"And still you are driven to undermine me."
"But, she's not-" Funaho began, without a sign of hearing his expressed confusion, and without half the strength she should have gathered.
"Not what? Not 'well'? All the more reason to keep her where she can do no harm."
"And what does that have to do with disallowing her visitors?!" Jagged anger found and dug its way into Funaho's voice.
"You know as well as I do that there is a security risk every time we allow a visitor into one of those containment rooms."
"But Washu ^designed^ those rooms! Washu ^designed^ Ryoko!"
"So she has reminded me on numerous occasions, suggesting that I trust ^her^ to ensure the safety of the galaxy." Azusa kept calm for his wife's rising anger, but frowned at how quickly she seemed to forget how recently she'd forgotten herself.
"She's her ^mother^ for Tsunami's sake!"
"We should not even be having this conversation without the proper security scan."
He looked down and placed his hand flat on the desk, pulling himself roughly forward.
"Oh ^burn^ your precious security! Is that what all this is still about? Keeping the only members of a family apart just so you can keep this convenient conspiracy safe for another few centuries, just so you can further estrange our son and the rest of your children?!"
Funaho's hysterics were finely focused, hardly pausing when Azusa exploded up from his chair.
"Lady Funaho! Calm yourself this instant!"
"I will do no such thing!" She bellowed back and leaned forward on her side on the desk.
"This," Funaho pulled away to point at the document between them, the volume of her anger softened under its own weight "^this^ is the most despicable order I've ever seen you give. It's one thing to deceive your own children, but to tell a mother that she cannot be with her own child--- when that child may be-"
She hated that she was crying, and she hated the idea of looking away from the emperor. In the end she could avoid neither, giving Azusa a prime opportunity.
"Your emotions cloud your judgment again, my queen." He said it almost mockingly, snatching up the offending paper and sending a few others to the floor. "This order is meant to intervene before the same happens to Professor Hakube. There's no telling what disasters might result if she were to reject my authority as willingly as yourself."
Funaho lost her edge in seconds, bitter tears pulling her face down to the side like a helpless surrender. Taken aback by this sudden apparent victory, Azusa frowned into himself before he retook his seat.
"I am not worried about her spreading news of Ryoko's whereabouts; Galaxy Police Intelligence presents more of a threat." He closed his eyes and breathed, finding some small remaining patch of softness.
"In regards to our son: I meant what I said. I do not envision his unrivaled fame lasting forever, in fact I am almost happy to see the early signs of its end."
"You've spoken to her?" Funaho began, tentatively but tearless.
"What? Spoken to who?" The heat began to rise in the emperor's face again.
"To Washu, you've spoken with her about all this?"
"I thought I made that clear." His gruffness came more reflexive than functional. Easily ignored.
"What did she have to say about...all this, about Ryoko? What could have caused her to lash out like that?"
"It makes no difference, from what I have seen she is little more than a stunted child. But with her power there can be no room for tantrums. Professor Hakube would do well to concede failure on this project and move on to the next."
Azusa picked up the document and held it tightly enough to make it bow in his hand.
"She probably had some falling out with that ridiculous schoolboy she seemed so attached to."
"You mean your great grandson?" Funaho asked well above a whisper. She looked up and watched her husband's face begin to fold in on itself, when he showed no sign of responding she took a step forward with hands clasped across her chest.
"Lord Azusa, do not deny Washu access to her daughter."
Frustration was still a poor, then no cover for confusion as Azusa began to lower the paper back onto his desk.
"I'm not asking you," she continued, "I'm begging you."
Funaho's shoulders just passed the height of the desk as she went gracefully down on both knees and lowered her head to her husband. The mercy in her voice and the mercy it asked for spread into him, widening his eyes and even pulling his mouth agape.
"Do it, not for the invaluable ally you would gain in so brilliant a scientist. Do it for your hopelessly emotional wives, who have all but surrendered their lives and children to your every whim and ambition. Do it for the woman who wishes to keep loving you, not as a feared tyrant, but as a merciful leader."
Funaho raised her eyes without intent to melt pity from him, but with a final attack in a sincere surrender.
"Please, do not make another mother go without her child."
***
Priest Charming rode his faithful stone stairs down from the sunset.
Incense stick in hand, he slew the dragon that forgot its place as a good luck charm.
It screamed like a colic baby and bled sweet smoke.
Aged shrine patrons gathered around the body, showing off new toys and absorbent underclothes.
Their bragging turned desperate, then violent.
But He saved them. Like an arrogant God, He saved them with a hand gesture.
He looked at his seventh and last earth wife through her wedding veil.
She smiled doll beauty like a natural and kissed his cheek through the cloth.
A serpent's tongue whispered in his ear that they were all insects on crumbling stones.
Tsunami, as he'd originally envisioned her, stood giggling with Sasami.
She faced the little princess, pulling out a nervously happy smile and a small blade.
Sasami squealed and applauded with glee at the Seppuku performance.
When it was over his youngest sister stripped away the old Goddess's robe.
She twirled about in the blood soaked garment, laughing at how oversized it was.
The wind for such an occasion. The obese and crippled dog.
The world exterminated and replaced with koi ponds.
He imitated a madness laugh just for the sake of curiosity.
He imitated a madness laugh just for the sake of courtesy.
As Ryoko dug the gem from her wrist and dropped it dry on the floor.
As Washu floated behind her, adult in extravagant green, extending her hand over her daughters shoulder, letting the other two gems fall near the first.
Ryoko phased into the earth. The gems blew into dust over stones.
Washu looked him dead machine in the eye and tore out her hair, her scalp.
She cracked open her skull like a crab leg and emptied the contents like a powder keg.
He stood in fire, in stars, and outside the shrine office, looking impatiently at a wristwatch, waiting for something fancy to step out of oblivion with something clever and hideous to say.
No sign. Yosho watched the mirror smear him with a wide excrement-starved grin.
---
Sweaty sheets almost glued Yosho down as he sat up and choked for air. The pungent moisture stung his eyes as he tried to re-orientate himself amid the slowly descending string of gasps. He pulled the sticky hair away from his face and held it firmly to his head, shaking despite the heat.
All through the aftermath of Seita's ambition and eventual surrender, Yosho had expected and even waited for nightmares. But so far as he knew his sleep had been delayed but never interrupted. Even now this most recent string of visions was fading from memory, stealing away to be forgotten like the time since he'd last had such a dream. He looked out at the early sun and listened to the tranquility of tiny spring creatures.
When the breaths finally calmed enough for him to swallow against his dry husk throat, when the sweat was wiped from his eyes with a dry corner of his sheets, he rose. A long drink of water prepared him to meditate for himself and to pray for his family.
***
Heavy, marching, not-gonna-take it steps carried him farther and farther away from the house. It was clean, no one was fighting, his work was done. There were things to do outside, and if they didn't present themselves immediately then he'd simply hunt them down. Maybe have them replaced.
Tenchi had every intention of keeping his promise to 'Uncle', but there would be time after lunch, or after dinner, or maybe before breakfast tomorrow.
*But she hasn't joined any of the family meals for two days.
One more step toward the first extended root of the forest and Tenchi nearly doubled over. The gasp, the grunt, the grip at his belly, it worked no harder than any other pain but demanded more attention for it. He tried to take another step, just to steady himself, and the sensation increased like a choke chain attached to his home.
This ailment, first triggered by memories of Ryoko's desertion, then moments of intimacy with Aeka, now seemed to discipline his movements as well as his thoughts. He shook his head at the ground and looked over his shoulder. Sure enough, the organ grinder turned a little slower as he took a step back toward the house. Of course, this just made confusion fill in for pain in keeping his face twisted.
*I don't want to know.
The bitterness of the thought struck brass, swelled his throat in the sun, and pinched his cheeks and jaw into a single gutter. With hands clenched to shakes, he burst into himself, into his mind like a gnarled orphanage nun, to scream at whoever was making all the noise.
*Well I don't! I'm sick of wondering whose going to snap next, or who already has. I know that whatever's keeping Washu down there can't be good, and I bet it has something to do with her giving Ryoko a ship to abandon us with!
Gasp grunt grip. So, the pain under his hand had nothing to do with how far he went from the house. He let his arms hang and it spread up from chest into neck and face. Although white-knuckle fists did their part to distract him, they hardly hid the strain of jamming curses under the sensitive part of his breath. There was nothing beaten or joined in the way he let himself fall in with his thoughts. No, it was definitely just a way to guilt them away by finally giving them the raging inner argument they wanted. His mind had asked for it.
*That's right, she ^abandoned^ us! After all we've done, after all ^I've^ done to help her feel at home. What makes her think that she can just fly out on us when she starts losing her temper too much?! She wasn't the only one Seita tormented!
*She---she---she just wants us to feel sorry for her! That's all! She thinks running away will make ^her^ the victim instead of us! Even I know running never works.
Tenchi paused and widened his eyes, hypocrisy of thought burrowing like a torn grub. It took a while to reach his heart, long enough for the true experience to make itself known. The admission pushed out through his clenched teeth, the word 'betrayal'.
*Just another night of drama, then she disappears---she must have known she wouldn't find him. But how could she be so selfish: make everyone care about you, then worry about you, then leave?
*Well she can just stay and sulk wherever she is, her and Washu too. I've got a future, and I don't need crazy pirates or scientists making everyone else walk around on eggs through a minefield. Aeka loves me and I love her and it's taken me what seems like a lifetime to get to this point.
Iron tasted even worse without a pinch of dust.
*But---But I guess I won't be able to enjoy it till I just say:
*'I hope you're happy Ryoko! You made it a lot easier to love Aeka now! So where ever you are stay there and stay out of my head! And tell your mom that if she misses you so bad she should just join you!'
Tenchi, threw his fists out at his sides and scowled the sky black, ready to shout out the declarations he'd prepared. Then that pain, that weight; now he'd just have his knees. The ground wasn't much better than stone, though it invited the helpless and enraged rest of him to rest and cry a while. Not for all the money in the world---and for Ryoko?
*I risked my life, everyone's life, just to save her once, and this-
*What am I doing? I'll drive myself crazy. Ryoko's gone, and whether she abandoned us or tried to protect us, she's still gone.
He looked up at the house and swallowed-in a sincere weakness. His heartbeat pushed cooling tar through brittle veins.
*If I can't curse her out of my head---maybe Washu does know where she is, and I can get a real goodbye from her.
Slow to his feet and unconcerned with the dust on his knees, Tenchi began walking back to the house, not as quickly as he'd left it, but certainly more determined.
*If Washu doesn't know where she is, then I'll do my best and maybe we can help each other to---to let her go.
The pain was fading, but not without flashing aftershocks. A hard blink and a tilted head and Tenchi was even walking a little faster.
*And if it's not Ryoko that she's upset about then-
Tenchi's pace evened out and the wind removed itself from his path. When he looked up he was almost warlike.
*No. What else could it be?
***
Yosho had insisted on taking everyone out to lunch so that they could show him around the city. Tenchi and Washu were the only ones allowed the excuse of being busy. The back porch door had been left open to allow dust and bugs and maybe Tenchi and likely no one else to come and go as they pleased.
"Hello?" Tenchi called almost as loud as someone expecting an echo.
One hand on the handle, he pushed some leaves back outside with the side of his shoe. Still holding the door open, he bent and swept out the dirt from his shoe with his hand. He chided himself reflexively as he placed his shoes outside, forgetting to grumble at whoever had left the door open.
Tiny dust hairs danced in the window like locust-faeries; Tenchi only thought of muted television snow. He walked through it to the living room, knowing then where everybody had gone the way he couldn't forget why he'd come.
He wasn't trying to tempt one last distraction, or anything like that, but from the corner of his eye he spotted something on the middle ledge of the largest windowsill. It looked like a dust rag. A step closer and it looked like a stuffed animal. No, it looked like Ryo-ohki.
The cabbit didn't greet him with her usual meow, but she also wasn't sleeping as Tenchi had assumed the last few times he'd seen her. He imagined Sasami asking if she could smuggle her little friend into the big city, then heard Aeka's soft direction.
*'Just let her sleep Sasami.'
But, standing over Ryo-ohki now, he was sure she wasn't sleeping, unless she'd taken to sleeping without her usual tiny snore and with her eyes half open. Though her body seemed relaxed, her position certainly didn't look comfortable. Long hind legs should be flat and supportive or sprawled out lazily to the side, not spread out behind her like a swimming or road frog. And even when those ears were flopped down they didn't look this much like unraveling rags.
Tenchi felt his hairs find their end as he looked down at the patches of un-groomed fur, then the unblinking, dry and dimmed eyes. The weight returned with a few friends, and he began bending down before his knees could pull him faster.
"Ryo-ohki?"
The sound of Tenchi's own whisper killed any remaining delusion of a 'well-enough' cabbit. A numb lump gestated rapidly in his throat, feeding off the shadow denials, the dull repetitions that she wasn't dead. The muted shock of being too late readied itself to creep in, but he saw tiny lungs expand. Relieved for long enough to realize she wasn't responding, he reached out to pet a wild and likely dangerous dog.
"Ryo-ohki, are you sleeping?"
The cabbit closed her eyes mechanically. For a moment Tenchi thought she was trying to escape by better feigning unconsciousness, but the gesture turned out to be a very slow blink. She was looking right through him, had not heard him, and wasn't feeling his fingertips run between her ears.
He swallowed, pitiful stuff buoyed under his neck, but he barely felt enough moisture in his own eyes to blink with. One last thing might get through to her, it wouldn't, and he knew that it would crush him back to helpless size, but he tried anyway.
"I've got carrots, Ryo-ohki."
She breathed mechanically. Tenchi forced his eyes closed, not sure now if he was fighting tears back or squeezing them out. They were still dry when he opened them to pick her up in limply quaking hands. He'd cradled more life in waterlogged beanbag toys.
When they rose together he looked down and saw that the dust had settled over the cabbit, leaving an imprint on the windowsill. Like an inkblot, he tried hard to see an angel.
Tenchi walked toward Washu's lab one step at a time. He looked back down at his package; a memory of how easily loved Ryo-ohki was led to a memory of Ryoko's joke about the ship's egg. It felt like a confrontation to consider how responsible he felt for the little creature, how responsible he was for its mistress. Again it became excruciating to put each thought in its proper place. Soon, he hoped, he and Washu---and Washu needed help, and Washu would help.
The closet door stared back for long moments before Tenchi glanced again at the artificial little life in his arms, feeling how cold it was for lying in the sun, making sure he could feel its heartbeat. He adjusted to hold it in one hand so that he could knock. The door opened before he was ready, but slowly enough for him to step back. Washu crossed the threshold with arms folded and face beneath a shadow. Tenchi guessed that she had seen his feet first because she seemed surprised but not startled when she looked up. Her eyes were almost too drained to tell anything.
*'Oh, hi Washu. I was just coming down to see you.'
*'Hey Washu, we almost ran into each other there.'
Normal, typical, basically natural responses. A few more begged weakly to be put to work, each like near-used-up school supplies at the very top of a trashcan. Tenchi barely considered the reflex of picking them out, but it took another few moments to feel it more appropriate, maybe even easier, to ask a question straight out.
*'Where have you been, Little Washu.'
*'What's wrong with Ryo-ohki, Little Washu.'
But he knew the answer to the first one, and didn't know if he was ready to test his emerging theory on the second one. Washu now looked confused though, and gradually more frightened. He wondered how he looked to her, if it might be too soon for questions, if this might be the only chance he'd get for accusations. Apparently his own head got frustrated with all the options and let accidental honesty roll out the first composite.
"Grandpa asked me to talk to you."
Washu's eyes widened as her lip began to quiver slightly. She hugged the crab motif of her tattered bathrobe tighter and looked around either side of him. He considered telling her that everyone else was gone, but she lowered her head and answered for herself in a nervous hush.
"I thought he'd taken everyone with him to the city."
Too absorbed to even imagine how he'd convinced her of that, Tenchi focused instead on how Washu was disbelieving the small bundle almost balanced in one hand. He looked down as well, subtly extending his hands and weakening his voice.
"There's something wrong with Ryo-ohki."
Taking her invention from him like delicate explosives, Washu turned silently to the side. Tenchi watched her walk around him to the living room and felt his cells tense. Her slow movements were the last sands of an hour glass, the first steps of a doctor with bad news, but mostly the uncounted times he'd remembered those final shades of Ryoko's gold and pushed down a scream. And so for the second time he spoke without a head.
"It's Ryoko, isn't it?"
Washu froze, and though he knew he'd hit the target, pulled back the thick bandages for proper treatment, he couldn't move either. More memories, more than he knew there could be, they all had Ryoko's face and wanted to tear apart his mind piece by piece. Through the chaos of it he remembered what it felt like to lose control and remember Seita this way; the hatred that came wasn't as intense as this, but he wasn't even sure what emotion this was.
"Tenchi," Washu laid Ryo-ohki down on the couch's headrest. One ear held up for a second, then flopped all the way down just like the other, cutting the scientist off from whatever control she had left.
"My daughter, Tenchi-"
He pulled his eyes away from the pitiful cabbit when she whirled around. In the few hurried steps she took to reach him, she readied the explosion. To Tenchi's second surprise, he was still standing when she collided with him, dumbfounded as she griped his shirt and pulled her forehead into it. Her wail wasn't supposed to be quieted by a sob, but it was, and froze Tenchi's blood just the same.
"^She's losing her mind^!"
It took some more of her sobs to think straight enough to search, then some more to find the right way to hold her. As much as he wanted to spill wisdom, as much as he eventually wanted to join her, he couldn't. He stood there, not beside himself or surreally present, just frozen in helpless surrender to this locust cloud of memories, just praying like a child to be saved from it.
***
Aeka sat next to Tenchi with bent face and folded hands, long silent. After arriving back with everyone else she'd tried to hide her suspicions: Tenchi's blatant announcement that Washu would stay in her lab another night, the way he distracted her while she tried again to convince her sister that Ryo-ohki just wasn't feeling well, both had made his request to speak with her foreboding rather than promising. Now everyone else was asleep or far enough away. She didn't have to try to hide her suspicions. Now she was successfully hiding everything.
Tenchi had memorized the words he'd say to her, had said them, and was now repeating them to himself again, all the while waiting for a sign of life from his princess.
*'Aeka, I did talk to Washu today. I'm sorry I lied but you're the only other person I want to know about this. She knows where Ryoko is, and she says that she's sick. She needs my help.'
*'I'll act like I'm leaving for school tomorrow, but I'll actually be going with Washu in her other spare ship. That's all I know.'
He hadn't slipped, hadn't even hesitated before the word 'sick' like he'd feared he would. But in context he thought Aeka might figure out the metaphor, might ask if 'she needs' meant Washu, or Ryoko. He was actually surprised at how calm he'd been. Of course, now the snap was more than ready.
The enduring silence made room to curse himself for not working his love for the princess into the report. So what if it would have brought along implications that he 'still' loved her? It wasn't hard to tell her he loved her now, it was just hard to tell her the right way. As a matter of fact, he should break this agonizing silence and tell her right now. Well, what was he waiting for?
Tenchi closed his eyes and kept them shut. He searched for a happy memory of Aeka that would not give him slightly less than an intense flashback of Ryoko. He was still searching when Aeka spoke.
"How long will you be gone?"
Her characteristically soft voice didn't quite grab him as much as it would have had it come from a mute, but it was in the same garden. Tenchi swung his eyes open toward her, almost asking her to repeat herself. He stopped soon enough to give her an answer, but not long enough to consider whether it should be so straightforward.
"I don't know, maybe...I don't know."
He saw her eyes travel upward into his, large and delicate enough to inspire an attempted salvation.
"Washu didn't tell me." Tenchi was glad he didn't gulp, but didn't know if he was glad when Aeka looked back down at her hands. He certainly wasn't glad for the next stretch of silence.
"I know you'll do what you think is right, Lord Tenchi."
Her voice hadn't changed. Although Tenchi knew she was not speaking her mind entirely, he didn't look up, not even when he heard the couch move and felt her breath next to him. Only when she asked him to be careful with a kiss on the cheek did he flinch, and only after she was halfway up the stairs did he turn around to speak. He'd taken a breath and opened his mouth and everything, but that was all.
***
The next morning Tenchi turned around to see Aeka standing in the doorway, barely ten meters away. She'd already given him his goodbye hug in the kitchen, along with Sasami and Mihoshi, but there she was again, looking at a ship bound for war. In the steps it took for her to reach him it was obvious that she refused to run or cry. As she encircled his neck and pulled his face alongside hers, Tenchi didn't drop his book bag to hold her with both arms. He did hold her unreasonably tight with the free one. He tried listening equally close when she spoke into his ear.
"I'll be here when you return, Tenchi."
Aeka let him go and stepped back. He looked at her as she stood with head down and hands folded, waiting to receive reassurance or punishment. She was beautiful, she adored him, and in a slow blink he remembered every peaceful and romantic moment they'd shared together, uninterrupted by gold fevers or demon calls. It was an entirely new experience, and what she'd said to him; she'd meant to add 'I love you', so after he turned away he told himself to respond in kind to that.
"I know."
It was not until he heard the door close behind him that the tidal waves broke, carrying him to Washu's meeting place on strip of skin at a time.
***
The ship was little even for Washu and especially for the two of them. Though Tenchi's knees pressed into metal a few times, he knew he couldn't complain. Apparently the ship had to be almost entirely rebuilt simply to accommodate another person---outside its cargo port. He'd foolishly asked about any other ships and taken her no-response as deserved.
That had been a very silent hour ago. The second half of it was initially spent enjoying an empty sea of stars, but the last quarter was wasted wishing for those big ugly planets to pass by again. Tenchi looked up at Washu's faint reflection in the windshield. Even beneath the shadow of her hair he recognized stone.
*Did she get that robot double of hers to play chauffer.
Tenchi leaned forward, wincing at the pain in his knees, and thought he saw the reflection stretch unassumingly, perhaps picking something out of its teeth.
*No. Why would she do that?
For the length of a vapor trail he considered a more troubling option, the kind he'd spent months of willpower to banish. It wormed its arguments deeper the more he closed his eyes to force it out. He told himself not to think about Washu's behavior, and definitely not to remind himself that he'd brought the sword. No. The only things he'd allow into his head were ways to preserve their spirits. Talking was the first and likely the easiest choice.
"Washu?"
"Yes, Tenchi?"
He paused to hear her echo his short voice, then allowed himself to be nervous so long as he wasn't rude.
"Will you tell me where we're going now?"
Washu didn't allow herself to be either.
"The Blue Rah Jin system."
"Oh."
Tenchi watched his reflection crinkle the opposite side of his mouth. Much as he wanted to cover up his blunt ignorance with sarcasm, it didn't look like it was in him.
"Where is that, exactly?"
"Just through this artificial worm hole."
His legs cramped and his head thumped as he rose from his seat with a start. The pains were put on hold as he stared into the black tunnel swallowing them up with so many threads of blue light.
When Tenchi had gone through one of these in Aeka's ship she'd turned off the viewing areas. The side reflection of Washu's face was eerily illuminated by the color racing around them, yet nothing changed in the external comfort of their travel. He looked around to every angle he could and gradually deflated his awe. A few blue lights slicing through a large black tunnel, certainly nothing to induce a dangerous seizure, hardly psychedelic, not even that long.
Fair, silent stars again, and plain understanding in Washu's voice.
"Don't worry Tenchi, we'll be there in just a few more hours."
Sight-searching continued long after Tenchi realized he wouldn't be seeing anything. He'd have to pick up where he'd been interrupted, or better yet, where he'd misfired. That meant not thinking about Seita, which was a glad given, and it meant thinking about Ryoko, which was unavoidable regardless of anything.
"When you told me what was going on, I asked what you wanted me to do without even thinking---but all you did was arrange this little outing."
Washu allowed her silence to let him encourage himself.
"You said that Ryoko was---was losing her mind. You-"
Tenchi had to tell himself to breath, had to force the air in at knifepoint if need be. That was the cure-all, the only way to slow the thoughts and keep them clear at the same time. He hadn't heard the official diagnosis in his own voice yet, but it didn't take a second for him to start wishing for some shock, the kind that was supposed to numb you when something unimaginable was happening to a friend or more. The ship was too small to lose control in, so he'd have to keep talking, keep swallowing and crushing it all down with blessedly clean artificial air.
"What do you expect me to do about it?"
And he'd asked that in the wrong tone and the weight crushed him and the vacuum was better than this. Washu's silence eventually made Tenchi look over to make sure her face was still a stone in the glass. It was.
"Washu?"
"Whatever you can, Tenchi. Nothing more."
Maybe she'd meant to add 'nothing less', but clearly she'd exhausted more encouragements than he had. This should have helped, or at least inspired.
"But Washu, I'm not ^any^ kind of doctor."
It hurt, Tenchi couldn't believe it could hurt this much to sound like a coward, and likely an emotional cretin. Soon as he worked that pill down he needed another to consider how the response must have actually struck.
"I may have let on that she was in a hospital, or some kind of recovery clinic, but that is only true in a technical sense."
Tenchi watched her head bow forward a little, assuring himself that robots couldn't show emotion, much less hide it like this.
"The reality is that she's in a holding unit that I designed millennia ago. They're for holding beings with powers beyond the restrictions of basic matter. I can guarantee you that the only 'doctors' that have seen her, that will see her; they're singularly interested in chemical treatments-"
Washu caught a sharp breath, but released it before it could cut its way out.
"If anyone's going to design a medication for my daughter, it's going to be me."
"Have you?" Tenchi asked after almost enough hesitation to end the matter.
"I can't, Tenchi."
Apparently she felt the disbelief welling up behind her.
"The clearest answer I can give you is that I don't think I'll have access to her indefinitely. The real reason, though---I'm not sure I can explain it"
Tenchi wanted to say that he understood. He thought he did anyway, as he barely had to think about it. Fooling around with Ryoko's chemistry was dangerous on any level, but no, it was more than that. He didn't know if he could explain it either, but it definitely had something to do with the weight, the one that still hadn't gone away.
"I do have a theory, Tenchi, though I doubt you'll like it."
"Go ahead." He welcomed her willingness to speak, even if he shared her doubt.
"Her breakdown," Washu began with a crushed sigh, "started manifesting before she left. But I still thought some time alone would help, because it all seemed connected with Seita---and with you."
"Me?!"
Washu's pause lasted long enough for Tenchi to feel small for more than the crack in his voice.
"I noticed this distinct emotional energy in her ^before^ Seita. It wasn't as intense, but it was definitely the same one that's consuming her now."
When put so plainly it was hard to argue, even hard to question. Tenchi realized that he'd been resting his forehead against the back of Washu's seat only after the metal made a decent imprint.
"I'm sorry, Tenchi."
He took his hands away from the semi-permanent crease in his brow, sure that she couldn't be crying and sure that he still shouldn't much breathe.
"I'm not trying to say that you 'drove' Ryoko to this. She crashed my ship, destroyed that GP hanger, and let herself be captured, all of her own accord."
Washu gulped, then tilted her head as Tenchi made a similar sound.
"Sorry if I'm adding that part in too abruptly. Don't worry, no one was killed."
She waited for him to make another sound, even looked to where she figured he was watching her reflection.
"What-" she swallowed thickly, "what I'm trying to say is that Ryoko isn't out for vengeance, or even attention; she means to surrender. That's the emotional energy I've been picking up from her, that's what's letting her consciousness shut down. She's giving up."
Tenchi listened to Washu's sobs rattle against the cage bars of her breathing. He finally felt his throat loosen, the numbness setting another mercy in over his wailing memories.
*Maybe its not numbness, maybe its just more pain I don't know how to respond to.
Barely hearing himself over Ryoko's varied declarations, he spoke in monotone.
"So what you want me to do is go and talk to her, get her to snap out of it."
Barely able to think through the wastes of gold, he glanced over for Washu's response. Her reflection closed its eyes.
"And you want me to do it because you think she values what I have to say more than anybody."
He watched the path of Washu's tear, not waiting for her to respond this time.
"Because you think-"
"Tenchi, I---I don't claim to know anything about your heart, and I wouldn't intentionally come between what you and Aeka are making, and-"
"Washu," Tenchi sternly reclaimed his moment away from fear; even he couldn't believe she'd attempt diplomacy after so much.
"Don't you have a telepathic link with her?"
"Yes, but that doesn't-"
"I think she tried to form one with me."
"She what?"
"Washu, right now, the closer we get to this place, the harder it is for my mind to focus on anything else---and I think I might even be seeing some of her memories."
Tenchi's monotone wavered slightly
"And I know when something like this happened before---it was right before that fight with Dr. Clay---and Zero. I remember feeling, for just a second, like she'd called out right into my mind----a little while before Zero showed up. And then, before you merged Zero and Ryoko together, Zero, she was doing the same thing, calling into my mind, moving this awful weight on top of me."
It was a simple tactic, take angry before you lose faith, and it seemed almost too simple for Washu.
"Tenchi, when I merged them, I had hoped that Zero's components, the emotions it suddenly gained, would help my daughter. But-" Washu sucked in a sharp breath and bit down on "it looks like it may have been too much after all."
"Washu," Tenchi began anew in the best sympathetic subject changer he could manage, "she didn't mean to desert us, did she?"
"Desert you," Washu sniffed, "no, of course not."
"She left, and she let herself get locked up so that she wouldn't hurt anybody. Then, I guess, when she gave up the idea of seeing anyone again--- she just gave up everything."
"That's pretty much my theory." Washu almost sounded calm after another good throat flex.
Tenchi breathed again, feeling his jaw quiver at new visions of how Ryoko might have changed.
"She's not---^dangerous^, is she?"
Washu was silent for much longer than he expected, then longer than he was comfortable with, but finally answered sincerely.
"She still needs at least one gem to survive. She can make temporary ones over long periods of time, but at the moment she has the same one you gave back to her."
"Alright---and she's in a cell she can't break out of?"
"Well yes, but, you have to go inside it to speak to her."
Tenchi's breaths were silent and Washu's follow-up was hushed.
"Inside---there's nothing to move around for."
---
The hospital appeared in the distance, a collection of dull ivory boxes resting on a huge asteroid. Its iron glowed onyx near imbedded propulsion engines. Tenchi raised his eyes in time to see that it was nearly half the size of Earth's moon, but he didn't really look at it. All he could see was all he could feel: the protective numbness ready to split at the seams again. He hoped Washu wouldn't take his controlled tone for too much a shield or separation.
"However she feels, however I feel, we've been through too much for me to forsake her now."
Tenchi waited for Washu to respond, then let himself hope for her to respond well. Eventually they pulled into the dock and she spoke almost as calmly as he had, assuming correctly that they were assuring themselves more than each other.
"We're here."
***
Tenchi looked around the dock for other ships. There was what looked like another one, shaped like a zeppelin, about a quarter mile away by the size of the people walking around it. Apart from that, everything was slightly more alive than the vacuum. He glanced over his shoulder at Washu's ship again, still unable to see inside.
When she'd begun telling him where to go and how to use the access card, he'd thought it was just a formality. Quickly enough he realized she did not intend to go in with him. He might have actually assumed that the only thing holding her back was a one person per card rule, had she not admitted otherwise. The conversation kept his first steps toward the facility.
*'Just hold that card up to the scanner on the right of the transport station, the one straight ahead. It will take you where you need to go. There will be guards in an observation room, just tell them Professor Hakube sent you, and show them the card. You'll have to walk to the cell at the very back, on the right, and hold the card up again to its connection tube. Try not to make any noise before you're inside.'
*'I understand...guess these passes are pretty hard to get, huh?'
The attempted joke had fallen so flat on Washu's face that he wondered if he'd broken some security rule by speaking of it.
'If you make any progress I'll be able to tell from out here---I need some time to collect myself.'
As Tenchi held up the card and stepped into the transporter he experienced a new anxiety, even though he'd anticipated every aspect of its rise. The notion that Washu needed to take a 'break' from seeing her own daughter drove his heart into the ground, but even as it bored into magma the moment of impact repeated. He knew she could see him in the transporter's lights, even from the football field between them. When his vision and atoms went blurry he tried to stand as straight as possible.
***
The guards had been ready for violence when they first saw him enter their work station, hands on their weapons, eyes boring into his. After displaying the card and giving the name, however, they'd looked ready to roll out the red carpet as soon as they found their biohazard suits. He'd held Jurian energy at the door they directed him to, and wondered if perhaps he should have requested a protective suit of his own.
Within a moment of gaining access to what he imagined was the most secure facility in the galaxy, he felt appropriately insecure. The high amount of white for the absence of obvious light was unnerving in and of itself, but Washu had not spent much time preparing him for how nightmarish the actual holding units were. Every silent sway and undulation almost served to distract his fear rather than fester it, almost. Surely such an environment could not be helping her dilemma. It could be similar to Seita's dimension in there for all he knew.
For all his past heroism he nearly stumbled to turn back toward the door.
He could scarcely see its outline, and was at a loss to position the observation room those guards were watching him from, waiting for him to come back in pieces. Just to be safe, certainly not to simplify the bet they must have placed between themselves, he checked their intercom or whatever they had here.
"Huh---Hello!"
Hoping to have hollered enough to drown out that first gasped-stutter, and to be heard, Tenchi was soon glancing about in every direction for a camera or microphone or robotic arm to yank him out of this place if worse came to impossible.
For some kind of reflex he held the card out, then high enough to see himself purely black and white under seamless lamination.
*You don't have to go in there, Tenchi. You can turn back now, go home and start a new life with Aeka. Think about it, how much trouble has this pirate already caused you? Why let yourself get sucked into her---to her---
Tenchi closed his eyes on warm tears. Even what might have passed for rationality, what might have preserved him so many times before, it carried as much weight now as a wet sheet of paper.
But it was draped over his remaining courage; a pencil, held between his middle and ring finger, and this sheet might tear and plop to the ground.
The memories were heavy machinery hammers, and her invisible cries for salvation were oozing from that bubble, that unnatural boil.
Aeka's kiss was a shard of hot shrapnel, swallowed with soft fruit and imbedded in his throat. He clutched at it and may have felt each edge for he couldn't deny the wavering in his knees, the draining of his resolution. Within seconds he could believe in being petrified.
The choice hadn't been made for him. The war for his heart was not over, but it would be soon, and the final battles would be even more horrific than he'd imagined. It curdled his stomach then but he was helpless; the passing stone of apathy, the one that had overwhelmed Ryoko's will. He hated himself for thinking it now, of all times, felt like slapping some strength into the child whining in his head. How could he ask blindly for deliverance to some easier position, to blamelessly abstain.
He looked at the card again, his eyes red even in a colorless reflection. By the time he considered asking Tsunami for strength, he was already convinced that he didn't deserve it.
Tenchi lifted the card closer to his face, the two thin black circles over an empty white surface fitting around his eyes like a mask. Emotional exhaustion was setting in, taking away his ability to sort through the two women screaming over the head of that frightened little boy. He saw Ryoko shivering with delusion in a corner and it made him bend sharply. On the way back to a moderate slouch he saw what Aeka had dreamed she'd do if left behind for the sake of a demon.
Then he saw that face, twisted upward in the grotesque perfection of vanity- wielded madness. A god-ghost's eyes consume and create everything, then All in a long laugh, in a hiss of cruelty.
It was a shower of ice water for the players in his mind, tearing bones out, erasing the memory of senses, and leaving him only a raw mind.
His child had something to cry about now; some of those last words had made a place.
*'---the woman who will love you---the woman who you will love.'
The card weighted down his hand, then closed it tight. The bastard of Kagato and Death spread its bones over Tenchi's shoulder and drooled onto his neck.
"HE-YA!"
The sword was brilliant and ready to kill before he felt it in his hand.
Five hard breaths and he focused his vision on nothing but more horrid cell-like prisons.
*This---is ^not^ The Genius.
This wasn't Seita, Tenchi told himself, even though it was using a voice he might favor, a practiced clarity from living between ancient conquest tomes since before their publication.
*WHHHAT!
Five identical putrid voices bubbled up from a single mouth, from a couple cells over. A different consciousness, but it also directed itself into his head.
Seita never spoke this way...and nothing Washu could build could hold him.
*Who would sneak in here after so long?
The third voice was about as close, as directly positioned in his mind, but it sounded more like it might have a human shape.
The sweat ran into his eyes, his mouth. And Tenchi began backing toward Ryoko's cell. He hadn't believed how important silence had been, but he didn't think of speaking.
*^So^, a Jurian mutt has also come to see that ^measly^ ^menace^.
The first voice sharpened its teeth against pestilent leather.
*Has Hell finally split its chrysalis? Have yet the Old Ones come to claim their glory?!
The second voice melted, and the slime fashioned crude organs in perversion's memory. Acutely aware of each other, the first two invaders in Tenchi mind synchronized their feast on his terror. It seemed their own excitement blinded them just enough to let him keep moving.
*Is this ^boy^ a servant, come to claim all---who bear HIS touch, HIS mark?!
*Do you know child, who's ^reek^ we were able to sense upon her?
*And it was on her ^mother^, too. Indeed, how can you gain ^her^ access?
Tenchi knew his sword might accidentally free these voices, loosing them to consume suns. He should put it away and silence his thoughts as soon as he finished fighting in this next breath. Seita's eyes made a kaleidoscope for every memory.
*What's this?
*...Ohhhhhhhhh
*Of course. ^Your^ essence is tainted as well.
*YESSS! The Ghost of Madness has-had-his waywithyou!
*It has taken us some ^time^ to move our thoughts beyond these prisons, but your world-ravaging ^harlot^, even her ancient-genius-mother--- they will speak with us soon!
*YESSS! They have drank of his venom, they may even know where his plague has blown him.
Almost as fluidly as he'd unsheathed it, Tenchi put the sword away and turned with hands set together. He'd clear his thoughts before whatever they were scrapped them up.
*Wha---thi---he---he can---^us^?
*All---ee of you! You'll tell us where-
*ENOUGH!
No longer able to think clearly, Tenchi stopped trying to clear his thoughts, like he might drop a sword in the face of a tank.
He couldn't sense the other two voices, but he instantly remembered the third.
*Fool boy.
Tenchi didn't know if he should consider responding to something with so familiar an energy.
*They are older even than I, but on this plane their powers are--- vulgar.
*Do not try to speak, you were at least conscious enough to know to clear your thoughts.
Swallowing in the bravest way he could, Tenchi began walking toward his destination again.
*The one they speak of, from what little they could force upon me--- he is impossible, do you hear?
*They say they taught him much, and in return he made them bold.
*Too bold.
*Do you hear me...little Jurian?
He passed the third voice, and was now closer to Ryoko. Yet still he felt the presence in his mind like the principles hand on his shoulder for some unknown reason.
*Little---no, no it can't be! I was ^there^! I was too old for the position even then, but I was ^there^!
Tenchi tried to use Ryoko as a beacon, this voice was not a friend.
*Our savior! No! You do ^not^ go to see what you believe! Tsunami-- -he, She gave his life to ^save us^ from her!
*FOOL BOY!
In a grip about the neck that meant a strike in the face, Tenchi saw the war. The army, he recognized quickly, was Jurian. Its general had known great status, its general was old and terribly powerful. He began laying waste to the many-armed and other limbed adversaries, screaming 'heathen', screaming 'Tsunami's wrath', incinerating enemy and Jurian alike in a frenzy.
*Do not try to defy ^me^! You---you Lie, you ^trick of blood^!
And Tenchi walked faster, and fought harder to lock the intruder out.
*He is not----She is not---give yourself to---
It was that day, that beginning, the empty ship, the thoughts cleared before death. He had to block this madman out.
*--nami---please---
The card was still in his hand. Tenchi closed his eyes and tried to make his grandfather proud.
*---its---don't---
His own breath, again, and again out. The room had never changed, but it was quiet once more.
The card nestled itself into the creases it'd left in his hand, not a feather of movement as the threads of light came to touch the gates, to bring him to judgment.
***
It had been nauseating and nothing like a tube, but once outside the little cabin the atmosphere felt pleasantly cool. An open field with a breeze from every impossible direction made its vibrating ground less than unsetting. But again Tenchi stopped to look for the light source when he recognized it as the same fuzzy gray lingering outside.
Holding the card up to the final door between them, Tenchi held his breath like an amateur. Everything was absolutely muted now, but holding the card up again was no easier. Then and again he tilted back toward Tsunami's help but, whatever kept him reconsidering, it was more than the general's example. Where all the riches failed, the only gold in the universe eventually took him off his guard and lifted his hand.
The sliding door was no more elegant than a supermarket's. The bed was hardly a cot, its sheets and pillows emerging from boxes at either end like tissues. There were multiple strands and tufts of hair lying about the floor. They did not look fresh, nor did the tiny bits of discolored mater. Dried saliva and other mostly clear fluids crusted the debris down in some places. In the left corner Tenchi could see feet, one rubber slipper halfway on. Knowing to look at her one piece at a time, he tried to see the 'living' space as just the way a messy person like Ryoko would leave it.
It really should have created a malady of different smells, if not one overpowering overshadowing soap smell, but instead there only seemed to be a single stench. Organic as morning mouth film on tin teeth, it gently burned down his nostrils and around his throat. He was beginning his first look at her now, so he couldn't really tell if it made his eyes water.
Emaciated twists of vein and bone stacked against each other; the bleached turquoise pants weren't made to fit anyone. Her shirt was long, its wrinkles old, and enough of it bunched up to show ribs stretching creamy yellow blotches across her skin. A sun-dried mantis arm dangled over one knee, having curled tight around it for too long. The way Ryoko's hair slopped over her head and face, a sky blue baby blanket left behind in a sewer rat's nest, it was hard to tell how the pieces on the floor had come loose.
In seven steps around seven minutes Tenchi was standing directly over her, neither blocking the air nor casting a shadow.
The first two steps had been wordless, though far from silent as he fought to breath or blink, to not bury his face in his hands. The third whispered out Ryoko's name, softer than the delicate footing that would have made her look up if she were awake. On his fourth her name was loud and clear and pitiful as a child holding up a once adorable road-victim for parental fix- all.
A few progressively emotional words were well wasted on the way to the fifth.
"Ryoko, it's me, Tenchi."
"Ryoko, please, answer me. What are you doing here?"
A quarter into this fifth step came the first stoop of Tenchi's posture, matching well the desperation pulling at his throat.
"You don't have to do this, Ryoko. Whatever happened, we all forgive you. We all want you to come home."
"^I^ want you to come home."
Thinking it would help, halfway into the fifth step Tenchi worked some strength into his voice. It might have helped him and only him, and only a little.
"Ryoko. I know everything that's happened, I know why you think you have to stay here, and you ^don't^. I can't just let you give up, not after all we've made it through."
Tenchi's quick motion to wipe away his tears gave him time enough for the first wave speech to finish or spare him. Just before the next step, he fell back on an almost whiny but more than sincere voice.
"I ^care^ about you, Ryoko. No matter what happens, I never want to see you locked away again. Please believe me."
The sixth was silent as paralysis, and, for a step forward, it was almost better. Tenchi just let his eyes and jaw quiver. Ryoko hadn't changed her shallow breathing, just as she hadn't signaled that she heard anything at all. The shock of what was left of her bored deeper, a block of iron forced into the virgin sand, blunt end first. All the hesitation pains he'd felt with Aeka were like the first pebbles of an avalanche.
Tenchi breathed her name again on the seventh, the lowest whisper for the final step equally ignored. So short a distance destroyed his knees, but it was unimportant, as Tenchi began speaking in a near moan for too many sobs at once.
"Don't you understand? I can't leave you here like this."
He timidly reached out to touch her shoulder, then pulled back. Ryoko's skin was icy and unresponsive a few centimeters away from actual contact.
"Ryoko, I-"
The next outreach moved even slower, pushing through a thick sea of visions. Tenchi's teeth clattered a few times, thinking on the strange warmth he felt at Ryoko's reckless embraces, stranger for how much more intense it was when they were invited, stranger still for how he always thought it to be discomfort. He reached her shoulder and held to it, lowering his head for tears that were going to be too large.
Seita's guide through her dreams replayed itself, holding his blood hostage, that Ryoko could be happy so long as she could see him happy. But here she was blind.
Tenchi's thoughts burst over themselves, drenching his blood back, all into his chest as he recalled that second time together with a demon in the cave. Her dawning surrender offered to him like more than a heart on silver; and all he could consider was his own possible escapes. Thus he forgot the needles in his joints and reached for Ryoko's other shoulder.
"I'm sorry," his face and voice collapsed inward, "I'm sorry for everything."
He pulled her limp form into him, feeling her hair tickle, then indent between her clammy forehead and his burning cheek.
"Dammit Ryoko! Whatever I've done, whatever I've done to make you think-"
And it was everything he'd done, every last thing he'd said or restricted, each possibility for shame washed in.
*'Please hurry back, my Tenchi'.
She let him go that day. Even if Ryo-ohki had been watching, she'd let him go.
*And I'd hardly given her a glint of hope that it wouldn't leave her behind.
*'Don't take anything from anyone'.
The rave, pulsing music into adrenaline light, all the joy he felt dancing with her and simply watching her dance, its syringe pressed deep.
*She---she thought I meant not to ^steal^. How could I be so blind?!
*And then---and then I acted more concerned for how she might break something than for how scared she must have been.
*That blindfold must have reminded her of-
*'It was cold in there---and ^dark^'.
*Oh gods.
*'Nothing seems worth doing, but I still manage to do plenty of damage'.
Tenchi held tighter and began rocking her into his sobs.
"Please! Ryoko! It's Tenchi! Speak to me!"
That was basically what it sounded like, ringing wet through his head.
By emotion's immunity from explanation and bias for unyielding, Tenchi felt something like exhaustion and stopped thinking in terms of regret or sympathy. His plight, no longer about 'getting through' to Ryoko, became the sole drive; he had to be at her side, comfort her through every pain. He had to be a presence more than a hero.
"Ryoko."
He held her in one arm, faintly remembering Zero's last moments, though there was now half the confusion and twice the agony. With his free hand he smoothed and smeared back enough of Ryoko's hair to open her face to him.
Another sob twisted his face, this one truly too large to escape. Ryoko's face looked dead, even with the breathing. The gold poured straight at him and the universe for nothing. Her lips hung open thinly, cracks of skin waved under her shallow breaths. Film turned to crust, pointing away from the corners of her mouth and into a few drained and dented wrinkles. Tenchi was closing his eyes again, ready to lean back into her, when life tore them open with a gasp.
"^Ten---chi^."
Clear and weak as would be expected from the mid-level above death, Ryoko had managed one word.
"Ryoko! I'm here Ryoko, talk to me, please!"
Tenchi smoothed some more of her hair back and gulped, realizing how close they were, that he was looking directly into her eyes and still missing the faintest glimmer of life. She remained silent long enough for him to convince himself he wasn't hallucinating, and that Ryoko was not gone yet. If this could be the only time he'd feel so focused, so undivided: so be it.
So he acted. He reached through the weight in his chest, through the complete collection of dense memory, and struck at what he hoped to be both pieces of the same heart. That would have to be enough.
"I'm here, Ryoko."
Exhausted monotone vibrated in Tenchi's self as he clamped his eyes shut, relaxed them slightly, and moved. Sleeping princesses lied differently. A new bride would have been warm. A captured obsession could never hurt like this.
And he pressed more of his life on, the scratchy peels of dried skin, the slick musk of hair, he'd breach the commitment seen only in dreams.
Air came easily enough, eventually, no great struggle, and no profound reflex to gently wipe away more of his tears and her hair. She stared back at him unchanged and answered unaffected.
"^Ten---chi^."
"Yes, Ryoko. Its me." Tenchi replied to himself, his voice failing before the vision of a world still dead.
She pronounced his name again, then again, then in slow repetition. It began to sound so much like a broken record that Tenchi waited for a needle scratch of silence, or preferably a sanitizing scream from anyone. For the first time Ryoko truly felt like a machine, a worn and worthless appliance, working with only enough action to beg its owner for the heap.
The search continued, hardly more alive than her voice. Tenchi tried to picture his eyes becoming advanced microscopes to pinpoint a remaining glint of the real Ryoko. The chant wore him away like a sand pile amid the tide, leaving him to bury his face deeper into her hair. Silent cries jerked his body and made Ryoko's already pale flesh impossibly whiter beneath his desperate grasp. For a time that was his own, he'd randomly rock her and shake his head, creaking joints and sweeping hair into different tangles.
Tenchi's world remained uncounted even when no longer followed by the mantra of his name. Silence and stillness before the tone-light of a card would take just more than seven minutes. The muted gauntlet tried with and without a prayer, and the watchmen let theirs be interrupted, but didn't lift an eye.
***
They made eye contact once, from across the docking port. Both of them mouthless as they cramped back together. Halfway through the Earth's atmosphere Tenchi did not open his eyes from the requisite blink. After so many times he still couldn't grind them like teeth, or weld them together. There should have been tears, at least some crack in his throat or face, but who was he to interrupt the dull hum of wind and distant jets outside the hidden flight dock.
Inside it was small and hushed as a real secret, the ship's echoes were swallowed by the dark. Washu climbed down first, every step. Tenchi followed and moved just enough to pass her without seeming to try as a weight made him look slower than he actually was. Some steps away he stopped and half-turned back. Washu looked up but could not see his eyes, even though he wasn't slouched. He handed her the access card and began to leave again.
"Tenchi."
He stopped.
"Thank you, I know you did all you could."
Tenchi shifted his feet under the absent wind, while Washu's sleeves betrayed the subtlety of her movements.
"I'm sorry Washu," Tenchi found something before emotion, "there was nothing I could do," then something after, "and---and I just can't think of anyone else who could help her now."
Washu missed the unusual lack of pride in such a statement. She merely looked at the pure white access card, tracing her thumb around one of its thin black circles. Tenchi's next step away was stopped short. The adult scientist was too tired to be silent when she spoke to herself.
"I can."