Sanctuary and Asylum 99

by Negative-Z

In the aftermath of torment our aliens find their foresight. By the gravity of freedom our friends search out their starlight.

5. Verse Fourteen is Empathy Part 2

Standard Disclaimer:

I thank all the owners of the Tenchi characters who have chosen not to sue me for suggesting some alternative uses for them.

Standard Advertisement:

I thank all the readers who have perused my other submissions and favorite authors.

Standard Procedure:

In keeping conversations civil; substitute religion, and politics, for family.

Tenchi Muyo: Sanctuary and Asylum

-Verse Fourteen is Empathy-

-Part 2-

She said---The Leper---sleeps tonight.

She said.

The greatest good---for the greatest number.

From the greatest evil---comes though they slumber.

The greatest triumph---proves the greatest blunder.

Greatness dies---but will still hunger.

-Excerpt "Blades".

-Raymond Watts.

000

In a mid-stress sense reflex, Tenchi tested his hearing by closing his eyes tightly.

"Washu? What---what are you talking about?"

She wasn't going to answer till he turned, and perhaps not even till he opened his eyes. With such a hairstyle making it difficult to know if her head was level or limp, he began to wonder if anyone could afford to be cryptic anymore. If this was her way of saying she still believed in him it was an awfully sullen rally. Did she think he had anymore left for a second round, a tenth, never for too long, had to keep down suspicion.

But no. No. The days of keeping people in the dark had to be over. Now. For everyone.

It was almost a step forward, but felt more like a tightening fist. Maybe Washu had expected him to catch her meaning in only a few moments, and then keep walking till he could return with the next plain answer to an impossible choice. If he was relieved of his duties now, if she had a backup plan.....

Grandpa?

Aeka?

Tsunami?

Tenchi swallowed and knew it sounded louder than it was and hurt more than it could. If for only once in his life, he was sure that this wasn't pride in himself or doubt in others; these feelings for Ryoko were One bond. It was up to him to pull her back up by it.

Had been up to him.

He knew he'd still rather die than forsake her, even more true now than on that day. But that wouldn't mean anything this time.

And he wished, and maybe he'd pray that it could.

Washu took slow steps in what seemed on odd diagonal. Tenchi blinked over the few remaining dregs of his intuition, and might have stumbled were he not moving so slowly after her.

Rather than clearing her path, the lights flanked her by unveiling each piece of equipment she passed and little else. Most of them tub to car-sized and nearly all of them keeping some amount of fluid in another state of activity. Tenchi didn't give them any thought save how odd it was to land a ship so close to them. He remained focused on Washu till a contraption earned its spotlight directly in front of her, nothing like a game show prize.

Turning, the grown and normally beautiful scientist offered him stolen patience patched over worn anxiety. There was a promise of questionable consolation in a better look at the instrument she'd clearly been heading for. Behind her, it could as easily be a bed as it could a wing.

Still unwilling to jeopardize the lives of millions by communicating overtly, she stepped forward and further to the side, directing his attention away from her even less reassuring profile, and up the dense electric cubes supporting what turned out to be a bed after all.

More specifically, it looked like a jointed operating table, complete with restraints. Tenchi certainly didn't remember this being near the ship, but he did remember the last time he'd seen it.

There was no time to chide himself for not demanding a few guesses aside from the only person Washu could be referencing; he needed it all for the slow calcifying, the revelation of black anemia.

"No."

Before all eyes, Washu merely lowered her head to walk with purpose. Through the seals of memory, and back to the controls behind her machine, she gathered will adjusting the hum and dials, straightening its posture. Even a lost ghost could see this as a silent affirmative against a raging denial.

"He..."

She watched him accelerate through mire, collapsing earths coming to devour her unlit emerald moons. With barely enough care to navigate around the smaller consoles, he soon reached her shoulders, both hands unmerciful. Unflinching, she was bent back against the head of the table by Tenchi's slightly shorter figure.

"You told us he was DEAD!"

A moment for measuring breaths, and Washu's determination mirrored the intensity of his malice to the tooth. Her stare lasted long enough to measure for violence then, calm as a slow squeeze of anesthetic cream, she took his wrists and lowered them like frail antiques. Before his more frightened and no less enraged shell, she stood straight and came clean.

"I told you he was 'gone'."

Tenchi looked around the edges of Washu's face for something to break and somewhere to lie down, but only closed his hands, slowly crushing the preserved shape of her shoulders. Still unable to fathom apologies for ignoble behavior, he watched her, now stepping away, now through the holo-laptop between them, now only her back as she walked to the other side of the table.

"It took some borrowed power and some bent ethics, but I was able to transport him, unsuspected, to a hospital near Tokyo."

"S-So you'd wanted him to die there?" Tenchi's voice barely believed its own powers of denial, but Washu paid little notice or mercy.

"I wasn't entirely sure of his recovery," the spotlight above the table faded to a gentle bloom of floor lights, "and only moderately sure of his paperwork."

A path illuminated under Tenchi's feet and onward to a door behind him. It didn't compute that he might be blocking something when he dropped his rear to the floor with a thud, leaving his legs at uncomfortable angles. A moment's reflection on the air screaming out between his tight fingers, and Washu could tell she'd spoken too soon as plainly as she knew she had no time. She started on the path, and again didn't spare a blink when he roared up from the floor to tear the flame from her.

"WHAAAT!!!"

Bits of saliva shimmered through Washu's holographic keys, but she simply continued typing, waiting for Tenchi's next attempt to answer himself. His teeth were a crack away from making steam, but he crushed his eyes tight and speech slow to stave off an ending.

"You're---you're telling me---that Seita---is alive-" Tenchi swallowed the acid name with unforgivable difficulty "-that the funeral---was all just a show?!"

"Essentially."

"But---you said you 'even atomized the samples', why would you say that if-"

The empire of disgust began crumbling into squabbling bands of injury and confusion.

"Because all I had of him were samples. Yes, that was misleading, but I did everything I could to avoid direct dishonesty."

"Washu! In the n-name of-"

With a long, deep rake of his skull, Tenchi barely kept his feet.

"I'm sorry, Tenchi," Washu kept typing as she walked around him, "maybe I should have been a lawyer instead of a scientist."

There was no one to acknowledge her plastic humor over Tenchi's private series of mumbled half-starts. He hardly even noticed she was moving till he heard a door open behind him. Washu stood to the side of its plain glazed frame, waiting for him to enter first as she pressed the same button series in dull repetition.

Tenchi eventually charged a meager glare up at her, then retreated it into his hands with a shattered whisper.

"But how could you-"

"Let him live?" Washu filled in coldly, "Like I said, it's a---it's surprising that he even survived with such primitive treatment, the levels of exhaustion he was showing-"

She caught the returning angle of Tenchi's glare as it sharpened disgust. Moment by moment he poured over it, tightening his face to reach her throat. The emerald ice began to crack, in hairs, in chasms. Her lip considered a quiver as she awoke to the distance spreading between her and the most trusted, sacrificing ally. Eyes closed and reserves crumbled.

"Please, Tenchi, don't hate me for this."

When she looked again the glare had only worsened, not only sharp, but jagged now, carved by restrained quakes of Tenchi's own fall. And when she didn't turn away the glare began marching toward her, her and not the room she had directed him to.

Tenchi was going to strike. Not sense into her. Not the truth out of her. Looking at the computer and thinking of shields, looking back at Tenchi and thinking of weapons, blinking out a slow tear Washu let the laptop and every other defense dissipate.

The Would-be Prince of Jurai found himself looking down at a previously taller opponent.

Washu shivered, head down, arms withdrawn. Tenchi's moment of surprise regained its violence shortly, now working the same glare at a lower angle, not at an attempt to deflect, but at an anticipation to receive in full at less than a beggar's chance for mercy.

Neither hand raised nor breath fluttered, and Tenchi saw that Washu's tears escaped in the same curved lines as Zero's, as Ryoko's had. A ripple of weakness discolored Tenchi's face, quickly struck down.

"After all he did, after all he was ready to do," crushing one ring released a draining hoard of others, "you just set him free?!

Washu fought her eyes up into his, and slowly nodded them closed.

"And now.....Gods, NOW.....you think we can ask him for help?"

Tenchi shook his head slow to make his fists tight, let tears fall to raise the weapons high. The subspace doorframe sang under the force of his strike, Washu jerked under his now bent form. She listened to his muted sobs till she could dry her own.

"I know this is all wrong, Tenchi. You have every right to despise me, everyone does."

She swallowed fast and desperate.

"But I swear, I swear this isn't how I intended anything."

The air needled through Tenchi's teeth and shivered the rest.

"Then why?"

"I---I've tried to tell myself so many---I tried to isolate it as some new kind of mercy, or sympathy, or pity, or anything. This was after days of telling myself that he deserved to be a helpless and alone in a strange world, that he deserved the pain of taking his own life."

"But now," she scraped for resolution and found the dregs of acceptance, "now I don't think it even matters."

Tenchi pulled both hands through his hair, holding his face between his forearms, needing more energy to listen than he had to spare for processing.

"So what kept him alive," he breathed a bit more evenly, then back to pieces, "is he still---still connected to-"

His rage had crippled him, but Washu impossibly regained ground.

"He shouldn't be."

"But how can you be sure?" Tenchi slid down a little farther, his chest bending some of Washu's hair.

"My equipment could always be wrong, but it's the best we have."

"That---That doesn't matter! He almost killed you! He tried to kill my Grandfather. Sasami, he-"

Washu saw Tenchi's body rediscover its violence in a single terrible quiver.

"Are you really---do you think he could say something to---when he was out to see the whole universe end up just like her?!"

The doorframe sang higher this time, possibly drowning out a crack in itself or Tenchi's bones.

Having managed to raise her eyes a few blinks under the bulk of Tenchi's despair, Washu offered her face back to the shadows.

"He may not have to say much."

A pitifully loose chuckle infected Tenchi's next burst of sobs.

"Heh. Will she just see him and remember vengeance? Will she just climb rage back to reality? Is his 'mere presence' going to be enough?"

The laughter choked on the soft bellies of his distended sobs. Washu was almost hushed.

"Possibly---in a manner of speaking."

After smearing his face downward with a slow and steady palm, Tenchi coughed up another joyless laugh, dropping his exhausted words inside it, holding nothing out for a positive answer.

"Do you even know where he is?"

Washu looked long into his face, reaching a tender hand halfway toward him. Tenchi didn't notice how she closed it, withdrew it, used the fist to push down the next assault of fear. Speaking only after her back was turned, she led him into the next room with all the focus she could counterfeit.

"Close enough."

000

There was no luster from the technology that had brought him back from another galaxy by midday, and now no tarnish on that which didn't reach his destination till late afternoon. The dull campus was uninviting, very level and very skewed rectangles amid the long shadows. Built decades ago, amid foresight's desperate craving for open spaces, concrete became yellow or gray where it should have been white, windows were frosted with sepia tiles to guard against distraction more than the sun's glare. At least there was air and trees that filled and overfilled their enclosures.

Buildings were scattered rather than piled, and in no readily apparent order. After half an hour of looking for the map that should have greeted him at the parking lot, Tenchi realized the land didn't naturally slope in any one direction for long. Passing what looked like an office rather than a class, he recalled how he'd never given public education much thought, save to scare in a few more hours of study time. There was someone inside, but surely they couldn't be bothered to give direction. In the few faces that he accidentally looked into he found either self-conscious contentment or boredom, likely for the deceptive boy to woman ratio as much as anything. He also remembered that he usually memorized his own necessary path at school, and little else.

Washu had her own three-dimensional map of every structure in the eastern hemisphere, and had pinpointed the specific genetic focus to a room on the 'eastern' section of the campus. Tenchi had her equivalent of a cell phone, so as not to confuse or draw attention. A last resort, but not far from thought as he tried to construct the logical order of door numbers through the encroaching memories of very different eyes on a single person.

Doubling back, he noticed a hallway he'd passed by. There were furnaces of pottery and blown glass at the very end of it. Someone struck steel and someone laughed with more enthusiasm than necessary. The corridor itself was dimly lit, even though it was papered with overflowing bulletin boards.

Tenchi took a strengthening breath, which in little time turned deep, then excited, then Tenchi had turned his back on the hall and shuffled toward a bench, reaching for it early like a rickety old man.

Paint flaked away beneath his fingers as he told himself that he didn't care if anyone was staring. He told everything to leave him be, all but clutching his head to spite the balance he still hadn't regained.

What am I doing.....

Is Washu insane? No, I'm not insane.

I can still stop this, end this right now.

Tenchi griped the bench with both hands then spared one to crawl toward the weight at his side.

What are you going to do, Tenchi? Dash in there and spill his blood all over the classroom?

His imagination surprised him with its vividness, even more the sharp grin that snarled up for just a moment.

Don't.

I don't even know if he's still there, his class might have ended already in the time it's taken me to look for it.

An odd sound snapped Tenchi's head upward and to every side. In a few, thankfully lonely moments, he realized that the bench was rocking under his grip.

That's it! I'll call Washu and tell her the whole thing's off!

"This is---this is impossible," Tenchi breathed wet sand as he dialed. He didn't even bother composing himself, just trembled in silence through the first ring, injecting his vision with a return to Ryoko's side. This time he would hold her even closer to him, this time he would bring her home and heal her soul himse-

The line picked up and Tenchi's jaw cut backwards to clamp the last memory vein, Ryoko's vacancy heavy with plea. The call had reached through and Tenchi was ready.

"Hello, Misaki Residence."

"Where is he?"

Tenchi's voice could have shouted and not conveyed so much determined fury.

"Hello? Tenchi.....is that you?"

Aeka was clearly too confused to be offended.

It should have been drier for being so cold; Tenchi nearly dropped the phone to loosen this other hand on his throat. That he'd asked precisely the wrong question to precisely the wrong person became unreal for the absolute absence of any potential for irony. The relief of hearing Washu's voice in the background rose only as a shade.

"Issat-Tench-es-I-believe-ould-please"

"Hello, Tenchi." Washu was stern, disappointed that he'd chosen to call rather than apologetic that Aeka had answered.

"Tenchi?" She considered worry distantly.

"Washu." A part of him hoped she felt whatever it was he'd swallowed.

"Tenchi, I've pinpointed your relative positions."

"Washu, I-"

I can't do this! I won't do this!

"Turn around and walk into that little open hallway, there's two big classrooms on the left. H---It'll be in the second one."

Stated plainly enough, the confirmation made the world quiver. Tenchi felt a year younger and more vulnerable by the second, mature revenge sank as tears welled up.

"C-Couldn't-"

"What's that?"

"Can't-"

"Speak clearly, Tenchi."

He swelled himself with the hardest expression he could manage, then felt it burst and ooze down his neck.

"Wouldn't it be easier to have him meet us somewhere?"

Tenchi could feel that she saw him, eyes clenched and jaw trembling. He knew that she'd heard him clearly, so after the fifth moment of silence he began wondering why she was taking a seventh. There was a sound like a sliding glass door, and he knew, and he hoped that Washu had stepped away from Aeka's earshot in a way to make it look like she needed better reception rather than privacy.

"Perhaps I was wrong to assume you understood," Washu began towards solemn.

"No, listen, maybe we don't-" Tenchi began, interrupted but knowing he sounded too much like a child to protest.

"Tenchi, you do realize that I've had absolutely no contact with him since....."

"Yeah. So he doesn't realize I'm coming for him, that doesn't mean-"

That he could have overlooked the importance of surprise, even in this context.....Tenchi inwardly gave himself one of his grandfather's disciplining strikes, then another, halfway into another when Washu spoke again.

"That may be a bad choice of words, Tenchi. In all honesty my guess is not much better than yours as to how he'll react when he sees you."

Tenchi felt himself begin to resent the scientist anew.

"Washu."

But his voice could still only convey fear.

"Hey may even try to run." Washu hesitated long enough for that and the other unspoken, harsher possibility to sink in; Tenchi had the sword, but neither was sure if he'd need more and be able to get it fast enough for who knew what.

"If he doesn't come willingly-"

"I understand."

"No, Tenchi. I don't think you do. Don't speak to him anymore than necessary, I'll handle the negotiations from there. If we have to, we'll do it another way."

"This is too much."

He hadn't meant for her to hear, but didn't have whatever it took to regret saying it. The silence passed between their wants in its own time.

"You're my friend, Tenchi."

It would have sounded sincere enough even separated from silence. And she hadn't said 'I believe in you' or any such dismissible cliché, thus it struck him tenfold and left him stunned through the rest.

"Probably more than a friend. Apart from Ryoko, you're the closest thing I've had to family in thousands of years. And I mean it, the same way I mean this possibility. I know it's all entirely insane, I know, but I wouldn't ask, I wouldn't put you in danger, if I had a fraction less of faith."

One piece of steal banished another.

Forced to breathe more evenly by the shock, Tenchi made himself glance over his shoulder. The student smiths were cleaning up; classes would be letting out soon.

"Are you sure there isn't-" Forced calm was better than none, he felt, even as he failed to complete his thought.

"I promise you, on my word. That if there isn't a real hope of having his---that is, I promise that you and I will take the most hands-on approach we can, even if it means blowing that prison to dust."

Tenchi began to turn, his shoes twisting a cigarette butt and sending dried yet unburned life into the wind.

He reached the mouth of the hallway with casual, then dead steps.

"Washu---keep talking to me till I'm there, okay."

He could hear her breathe, maybe cry on the other end.

"Okay."

Estimating with a glance at his watch, Tenchi had probably five minutes and fifty steps to go.

"I'm-"

"Not far now."

He'd meant to apologize, and it seemed she'd suspected this too.

"You have nothing to be doubtful of, Tenchi. This is the bravest thing I've ever seen---ever known---and I---I can't say how grateful I-"

To hear Washu being both so sincere and so vulnerable somehow strengthened him a little before draining twice as much away as he stepped into the corridor. Only the farthest of the three hall lights flickered. The outdoor furnaces were under thick but moderately translucent canvas ceilings, and the classes themselves had the last sickly hour of skylight life waning under the doors.

A few of the bulletins had blown to the floor; a smaller breeze pulled off another and enlivened the rest.

"Washu," Tenchi recognized his fear and tried to banish it before continuing, "is there anything else you haven't told me."

No immediate answer.

"I only set the phone down to dry my hands, I'm sorry, I never-"

"That's-" it was difficult, but not impossible to force down any related thoughts for a better time. "That's okay, Washu. I probably would have goofed up anything more advanced than a cell phone."

Tenchi heard her muffled laugh, and he tried to echo it as he moved on. He found himself attempting stealth against the left wall, later realizing that anyone coming out of the first door would see him in one of two moments. It was a bit late to seem less suspicious.

"What I meant to ask, what I mean---what I meant to ask was, is there anything else, anything you haven't told me?"

He knew she'd recognize how difficult the question was, how open it made them both, and he slowed his pace to give her time even if all strategy warned against it.

"I don't think so." Washu responded like the image of a shaking head that was obviously still checking possibilities.

Another few steps, no longer pressed as flat against the wall.

"There is one thing."

It took almost everything Tenchi had already used to keep moving to such a rise in her self-consciousness. Managing to sound composed helped some.

"Go ahead."

"He---Seita. This is probably unimportant, but do you remember that night when he introduced---when he explained his powers to us?"

"Basically, yeah"

"Do you remember how he compared his powers to Ryoko's? How they're both fused with the DNA of the 'mass' creature?"

"Go---go on."

Washu's first and second breaths were expected enough, but the fourth finally made Tenchi stop his approach.

"He explained that when a mass duplicates itself, it's really just a 'perception projection', a mirage. This is basically correct, the difference is, and for whatever reason I chose to correct him at---a later time-"

"Yes, and?" Tenchi tried to sound encouraging rather than impatient.

"With masses and with Ryoko, they can, and often do---'put some of themselves into it', so to speak."

"Meaning?" Tenchi's confinement to repeated questions almost made him whisper.

"What I mean is that, if Ryoko wanted, a double she made could perform a simple task, like pour her a glass of sake, or lightly strike an enemy a few times. In this case, she'd be putting some of her own energy into it, you wouldn't be seeing a double where there was only air, you'd be seeing a double where there was a concentrated sphere of her power."

Tenchi stopped and flattened against the wall entirely, locking his knees as a precaution.

"You mean all this time Seita's illusions could have-"

The disbelief poured out in a frigid stream till Washu diverted it.

"No. In all the places where it might have.....'suited' him to do so, there was no evidence. I'm fairly certain that the result of his specific genetic experience is that he simply can't, even as the other aspects of him strengthen."

"Washu---why in the world didn't you-"

"I know. I know. But this information didn't reach above hypothesis until those last days."

He heard someone approaching behind him and quickly made his way to the five amazing job opportunities and three, one expired, concert flyers. Sure that whoever it was couldn't see his face, he waited, then remembered the phone and the more imminent uncertainty.

"What does that mean?"

It then dawned on him that he'd heard high heels. This relieved him long enough for the person-specific paranoia to creep closer. Washu's own slightly anxious voice helped him banish it with excessive force.

"I told you, all I have are theories."

They gave each other a moment for ears, then another for air.

"Almost every day since I made the announcement, I've thought about it."

"And what do you think now?"

She ignored his incredulity and, without warning, grew a chill shroud.

"When a mass dissipates an illusion with some of itself inside, that energy is dissipated too, yet the particles automatically gravitate back toward their source, leaving only a few behind. If Seita actually did put any of his own life into his illusions, once they died---they never returned to him."

Tenchi listened, then, uncertain how this information had impacted him, he stepped away from the wall and took the first of the last six steps. He was ready to wish her a quick and stoic farewell when she continued, and he could feel her eyes, grasping soft, asking deep.

"I'm still wondering, especially now," she almost laughed, "what it must be like to put none of yourself into your creations---or, what it is to give something life, knowing it has no purpose, other than to perform, and then vanish."

A clamoring shuffle. The students would be flooding into the hall soon, too soon. Tenchi gasped a hurried goodbye and felt so trapped he tried to streamline, pull all his organs closer. He realized then that he'd just crept over the first door, that its doorstop and the second's were against the wall, between his feet, two inches from each other.

Two gossip-giddy girls, and one joyless emaciate youth swung the first door open, almost nudging him with the handle. The second door moved more slowly, and Tenchi shot a panicked glance into the stick-thin window between the door hinges. The three students were not him, probably far too average for him to wear, even in desperation. But he couldn't waste energy on that, now he had to decide if he'd chosen the absolute best or the absolute worst position.

He couldn't watch one door with the other ready to pin him to the wall, and looking at the bulletin board again would just obstruct traffic. If he dug in, maybe grabbed hold of one of the doors, but that would draw attention. At least there was some chance this way that his target would actually pass him and he'd be able to follow to a less public place, but he was a swordsman not a spy.

More students from both sides and it wasn't long before he had to catch and hold the first door open. With the other hand he redialed equations on his slightly odder than normal cell phone, watching everyone's average shoulder height, waiting to see someone's torso. One student from the first class headed toward the furnaces, but missed his chance to tip the doorman.

The second class, Washu was right about its size, must have noticed him about as much as the fallen bulletins. Ten minutes later he'd counted twenty more harpies, a handful of ghouls, but no ghost. There were a few papers still being shuffled inside, probably.

Tenchi considered stealing a glance and carefully let the first door close, grimacing down at the glisten of sweat on its handle. When the latch snapped he breathed and lowered the phone into his pocket, careful not to let it switch off. He stepped away from the wall and focused on precisely how much time it would take to have the sword ready. Feet drawn silently together, he stepped forward, nearly planting his nose into someone's chest.

000

"Is Tenchi going to be home in time for dinner?"

Aeka kept her eyes on the greens.

"Sis?"

"Mm, sorry Sasami. I, that is, Washu said that Tenchi was running an errand for her. I only spoke to him for a moment."

"That's odd."

"W-Why, we do not have to have a deep conversation every time we-"

Sasami giggled brightly, and both Aeka and Mihoshi looked up from their dinner tasks to stare in wonderment, almost forgetting that they still didn't know the punch line.

"Dear sister," Aeka put on a pretense of annoyance, "what ever is so funny?"

"I wasn't talking about whatever you said to Tenchi, I was just saying that it's odd that Washu wants him to do errands. I thought she never asked for anything from the city."

Aeka looked puzzled for a second, then blinked slowly, shaking her head so minutely that no one seemed to notice.

"That may be. But, you know, she might have done so while you were away."

"Oh." Sasami's spirits visually sank, and she returned to the last of the preparations.

"Actually, miss Aeka, I think Sasami's right. I don't remember Washu ever adding something to the shopping list. She must have almost everything she needs down in her lab."

Aeka curled her lips to the side slightly, then less slightly, as if she were restraining herself from questioning the detective's memory, or the value of the GP.

"Ah. Well, in any case there's a first time for everything."

There was a renewed and almost redoubled cheer in the First Princess's voice as she moved toward the sink to continue her task, humming up a bright and directionless tune.

000

She needs us.

Sister, it is.....difficult to know your meaning.

Even when she embodied chaos in the highest, she never engaged in such reckless folly.

Both our memories are vast, but they are both still selective.

She has no idea yet what she is---

It is better that way.

Just because she hardly heeded our advice before, it does not excuse us passivity.

Is your greatest fear really that you be accused of inaction?

Our inaction will have far greater consequence than reputation.

Our continuing to speak is still quite a scandal.

.....

.....

How close a look have you taken, since his---reversion? What do his eyes tell you when he gazes upon his plain place on that plain world?

I'd think that he's seen enough, of worlds and more, not to dismiss any as 'plain'.

I said---how close did you look?

.....

.....

Close enough.

000

There were hands on his shoulders before Tenchi could even reach toward his belt, large hands. In fact, in another moment, he realized that all of this taller man was fairly large, and after a confused yet still overly cautious glance upward, he realized that this was a chance encounter with one of academia's most oddly common social phenomenon: the jock science professor.

"Whoa there, little buddy."

"E-Excuse me." Tenchi's voice was soft but clung to dignity throughout the short bow.

It occurred to him then, as he kept his eyes darting about, that he wasn't blushing a sweat over an oversized smile while scratching uncomfortable chuckles from out the back of his neck. He was entirely too tense for anything of the sort.

"Can I help you with somethin? You look kinda lost."

"I'm," Tenchi realized he was now behaving like a nervous delinquent, and promptly adjusted his posture with a forced casual breath, "I'm, uh, I've never been to this campus before, but I think a---someone might still be in your class, someone I'm looking for."

He winced at his nervous voice, then hoped that he'd at least sound too much a fool to be suspicious.

"Oh well, uh, there's only about three students still laggin' in there. What's their name?"

"It's-"

Panic tasted unspeakable in its pure form. Plunging his hands into his pockets, leaning back and staring down and around into the classroom probably pushed him back closer to hooligan status, but it kept him from spilling anything there in the hallway.

"He's.....taller, maybe about as tall as you, or maybe more. But thinner, I mean, he's kinda thin and-"

Tenchi froze in place, shoulders still drawn close in the universal 'skinny' body language. Feeling ridiculous, knowing that he was answering an entirely different question, he then realized that, after months in the city, the former guest might look like anything.

"I guess he.....looks like a foreigner."

He felt the life drain from his voice. Half expecting a shout from the professor for him to speak up, he continued, losing himself in how to describe memories he'd both murdered and fossilized.

".....Blue eyes."

"Heh, yeah, I think I know who you're talkin about. I'll go tell him you're waiting."

The professor had obviously been only half attentive, and yet the next moment Tenchi was struck with how monstrously vacant he'd just been.

The element of surprise, had it ever existed, was going to die any second now.

Having just finished a lecture, the professor retained just enough projection. Tenchi listened, letting the rest of his nerve, and most of his senses slip to the floor. Two book heavy comrades leaving the room knew instinctively to treat him like a rudely placed pillar. He hardly noticed when one of their backpacks grazed his arm, and though he felt like he should be slouching, mouth slightly agape, he knew he didn't have the flexibility. The first information to register made him smirk in irony, and from that he tried to rebuild his confidence, grasping for materials in a slow fire.

"Hey, uh.....excuse me."

Like a dried switch, snapping off at the tip, Tenchi tightened his fists and strained his ears. But if the remaining student had answered, he was still too soft-spoken.

"-ere's some guy---side---for you."

Even having lowered his voice to one on one, the basics of the conversation were still clear, but the other party continued, Tenchi was fairly certain, with mostly physical prompts.

"Some guy, haven't seen him before."

One of them was shuffling papers and bindings.

"Aw, I guess he was average-looking---one of those silly---hair things."

Tenchi didn't think of sunglasses, or heavy fedoras and trench coats, but he did imagine that, were he to kill Seita right there in that classroom, the professor would probably be able to provide a more specific description. He searched for another ironic grin in this, and failed, and considered running as fast as he could.

Silence, the snap of a satchel, and there were heavy footsteps coming right for him. It was clearly a long gait, somebody skipping stairs without losing balance or purpose. Tenchi hardly had time to plan a stance. His fingertips touched the sword, and the coach's diplomatic duties were over. He shot a friendly grin as he jogged by.

Tenchi could still hear the heavy steps out onto the campus more than any sign of life from the classroom. He considered stepping away from the door.

Stare-down in a hallway, or walk into that class right now. There could be another class in here any minute.

Yes, and this could all still be the worst idea in-

Seita was probably wearing tennis shoes.

Ohhh.....gods.....

His steps were slow, obviously deliberate or paced to seem natural.

Tsunami.....Mother.....

Tenchi took a step back, a defense, a retreat, he cursed himself for it regardless.

The steps did not ascend any slower. There couldn't be more than ten, twenty seconds before the hallway was theirs.

I'll match him.

And Tenchi moved back another, more softly this time, uncertain why this plan seemed the best possible.

Every time he takes a step up I'll take one back.

It wasn't terribly difficult, so long as the former guest had not been blessed with above average hearing before witnessing oblivion.

So far so good.

A shadow touched the doorway's ground, would have filled it were it thicker. The approach stretched then drowned it in the less light of the hall. Whatever remained of readiness might well have begged for one more hesitation: Linger in the doorway, please. Yet the shadow lost in the hall crawled back, up, and under, remaining for two long steps before better light melted it away, revealing the villain.

Tenchi had been right about the tennis shoes, but wasn't sure how to take in the rest. The almost olive-black slacks might have looked sharp on someone before their widow donated them. With buttons and a collar, the short sleeves barely excused the shirt for not being tucked in, hanging single blue, old or new faded blue, hospital blue. Slightly oversized as it was, the top button held beneath his stubble neck, the eight o'clock shadow spreading up and all but matching his shaven head.

One hand pulled the second strap of his book bag over his other shoulder.

No sign of makeup.

Tenchi hardly noticed anything save this wait for eye contact, feeling no stronger for having it ready all through the long entrance.

Seita decided he needed to take one more step, lifting his head with atrophied grace.

"Hello, Tenchi."

It was the 'plain' voice again, but matched with the almost every-man movements, it made him seem as old as dad, if not older.

The eyes. The same.

Weary of needing sleep, but vividly alive, in a place less accustomed to shrugging off the 'different' as 'foreign' anyone might have noticed that there were separate kinds of 'odd'.

And the comparison to Ryoko should have been expected, and the memory, and the rage afterward too.

Tenchi almost winced when he realized he was gripping the sword in his pocket. The same energy maintaining his focus was preventing him from venting any of the pain brought by flashes of his fallen half.

She had been foul and frail in his hands, and here was a monster who had wielded madness.

She had been unreachable, like painted candlelight stained by smoke, and here was the being that had served as Oblivion's archangel.

She was sewn to every emotion in him, though all but dead.

This was the cause and possible cure, this thing of unspeakable ambition and unfathomable memory.

"Would it be vulgar of me to assume you'd come here, now," Seita blinked to lower his eyes with the same failed grace, "to 'finish the job'?"

Just the dust of a croon now, a velvet test-strip hardly long enough to ring a baby finger, but it was enough to make Tenchi pull out the sword, slow, almost subdued, holding it plainly at his side, saying he was ready though he wasn't, that he would use it though he couldn't.

"I....."

Tenchi couldn't believe he'd begun to speak before having the slightest idea of how to reply, and was quickly thankful that no one could see his face till he could pull it back, high enough that no one would think he was hiding and few would consider looking too close.

"Washu told me you were here."

It felt something like 'good enough', worked for both opening communication and keeping it to a minimum.

He's coming closer.

"I see."

No. Not this again.....talking as he approaches me.

Not this again! Oh damn it to Hell I swear I'll do it! Doesn't he see? He comes close enough I'll do it right here and never show my face again.

Why? Why won't he look up at me?!

"Whatever else she's told you---"

Seita had kept his hands on the backpack straps, but folded his arms now, shifting them as he slowed his final step, barely within range of the sword, looking far more nervous than intimidating even before he raised his eyes.

"What do you think you'll tell me?"

The larger, though clearly no more composed figure might have spent too much of his time preparing for an encounter like this, or all of it.

Tenchi tried to swallow naturally, wondered how he should hold the sword, and nearly crumbled altogether, far from any idea as to what that would involve. By already assuming that his former host had planned out the information he'd be giving and withholding, and suggesting at the same time that something might slip, he was likely trying to make him more nervous than generous.

As nervous? Or maybe that's his way of surrendering how ignorant he is. He's obviously hiding fear, but he isn't trying to puff up his confidence---not that much anyway.

In another moment Tenchi decided that Seita's face completely matched his plain voice. Much as he tried to measure his fear, this version was too mortal; much the same when he tried to measure his danger. Finding humanity would clearly be better left for better places.

And if he can ask tricky questions then I can give indirect answers.

"Follow me."

With the hope that he'd been unreadable, Tenchi turned and led the way back to the car, thanking everything that he only had to fake a few confident steps before they were echoed, fake or not.

000

The gravel in what might never be a paved parking lot minimized worries that the following steps could sneak into his own. Tenchi had tensed a few times, almost nauseously, during such absurd thoughts as Seita resembling a student following the principle back to his office for discipline, as the Ghost of Madness being brought back as a guest in the place that should have executed him.

Tenchi rested his palm against the top of the van door, though he didn't feel tired at all.

Well he also better be too confused to speak, damn it.

The sword had gone back in his pocket not too long after remembering he was still in public, but now, with no more cover than the space between a van and a cheap street racer, he just had to hold it again. Hoping that Seita would see the movement, see it and tremble, see it and fall to his knees, made him feel like ants were making air holes in his bloated carcass tongue. The siege continued on for half and more a minute.

This is just as insane as it was when Washu first mentioned it.

Seita shifted his feet, making Tenchi raise his head, slow and slight.

"Whatever your family is now---"

However much this was a continuation of the same theme, however long he'd been preparing it, every intuition and the only one spoke to Tenchi, comparing the tone of their last encounter to this, to eyes he could feel searching him, daring him to understand.

But now he's not sure if he still wants to die.

He's actually afraid.

Tenchi turned as quick as cautious could be. Seita had kept his arms crossed, had kept his face angled down, but was now staring in with the only blue, striking out from what was hardly more than what had been hauled, unconscious and frail, into Washu's lab. All the deceit, all the cruelty, all the glorified madness visited on his family, the universe, had come from a gaunt and almost homely man. A conversation that could cripple the strongest mind, a power that thrived to undermine existence, what could only be stopped by its own weight; all grasped and wielded by one mortal mind.

And in a miniscule narrowing, Tenchi knew that the blue saw what he saw. And that helped it say what it had started:

"-I am still what they remember."

And the negative and neutral meanings wove so desperately together that the one invariably ate the other, cursing with a full mouth that two had ever existed. Years of fighting with honor swung up into the guts of abomination with an intoxicating, self-righteous fear. In as much time the same fist swung into the now even lower side of Seita's face, and for a moment even petrified trees could be felled.

The taller man went down like a tower of cardboard tubes, turning 90 degrees from the force of the second blow and falling onto his backpack with a heavy crunch. Tenchi looked down, hearing burst windshields, dragged limbs, and pleas that coughed up wet gravel.

He flexed his fists and watched Seita lift his head into his hand. The fluid glistened on his shaky fingers, scooped out from where his teeth had cut into his cheek. There was enough of it for Tenchi to see that it was red, red and silver, copper and paint pen. A casual observer would probably only take it for blood.

Once again, their eyes were hidden from each other.

At either end of conceptual justice and natural law, their meeting rooms were left empty. You were lucky and only maybe likely to get in trouble for having such huge insulated spaces to yourself. Play make-believe in them or be more than alone.

Having the first person he'd ever truly hated at his mercy, considering that it might all still be an elaborate illusion; both took either end of a breath. Tenchi felt, too far ahead for his throbbing fist to catch up, increasingly less like an avenger and more like someone without control. A new emptiness waited on the horizon, but Ryoko's eyes flashed through his thoughts in full brilliance, erasing the race, and pulling down a tear. He wiped it away before walking the full distance around the van to look into Seita.

It wasn't like looking down at all. The guilt had already collapsed in on itself. Even if Seita looked prepared not to gaze up from his fingers till someone spoke his name, clearly lost as to how to define his own shock, there was enough mortality there for Tenchi to take it as humanity. Neither of them needed more than one thing to say, but if either could think of only one thing then the other could be thinking of as many as he liked.

A thought of the weight and he felt it shift.

"I need your help."

Tenchi didn't think of wiping the blood away before offering his hand, nor did Seita when he took it.

000

It was reflex rather than instinct to reach for the radio the moment they pulled off campus and into heavy traffic. Tenchi had known within seconds of leaving his parking spot that he wouldn't last through a dead silent ride with the former guest, and yet he froze mid-lean, his hand just grazing the dial. He'd prepared a silent curse on the reminder of what overcrowding really meant but, blue or black, it was swept away amid a horrific lapse.

What in the hell kind of music would-

Forcing the belief that intuition beat impulse, he left memories in static and turned to the first news channel he could find. In a short time it confirmed that yes, they would indeed be stuck in traffic for at least an hour.

By focusing on the windshield's reflection, Tenchi could see just enough of what was now Seita, using some white rectangle to erase the last of his blood. If there was a bruise, then there was a bruise, and Tenchi resolved to deal with that then, if he had to. And just as a transparent mirage was plenty, he decided an hour or so of news radio could make up for a year of knowing nearly nothing about his own country.

Overcrowding and mistrust were still popular flavors.

Seita continued lolling his gaze out the window as if they were already gliding down a country road. Whatever his actual expression, Tenchi wasn't ready to risk a step out of important worldwide events for a stand in the reality sitting next to him.

---

Two out of three usually wasn't so bad. Map showed a route through the tunnel would save time, radio gave no mention, and intuition had said that most others would want to avoid it.

Soft lights inside the concrete Leviathan made reflections stand out. Fortunately no one was testing the acoustics with their horns as they did in the TV traffic jams; it was getting hard enough to hear the radio.

Tenchi could see himself as much as he could see the bumper in front of him, as much as he saw a taxi patron storm by, and imagined a rickshaw pulling in. The image of his passenger's face was entirely obscured under a single carefully placed glare. Any minute now they'd advance and he'd be able to change his dumbfounded reflection.

How could he possibly be sleeping?

But why would he want to fake it?

How would I find out?

Cramping from his temples down to his hands, he thrust his eyes down at the steering wheel, expecting white knuckles, feeling white knuckles but seeing a pink tremble. The heavy thud to reassert his grip made him hold his breath, hating the space between fear and hope of it rousing the sleeper. He supposed Washu's transmissions could reach the phone even through a tunnel, and assumed she could probably teleport the van and them out of this mess, if she really wanted to.

"Hen---hs-bound by its-"

Tenchi's throat iced over, and he waited for his heart to loosen its grip on his ribs. Seita had just mumbled, in something like the voice he was more familiar with. Turning off the radio was an acceptable reflex.

"Mother's collision---called children of-"

Again, mixed with murmurs, though Tenchi was certain now that it wasn't quite the same sharpened whisper.

"---n the feh-mn.....befell more than those numbered.....who fled before the hollow."

Rolling his head over, the smallest of frets, possibly caused only by the headrest seam that had stamped a line across his already discolored cheek. Thinking on a bruise again, how it could darken into view in hours as easily as days, it was hard to tell, then hard to admit that Seita's sleeping eyes might have been peaceful.

A random eye movement, breath or words barely waving the line between his lips. Tenchi held the wheel till circulation screamed. But surely, Tenchi assured himself, whatever he'd said, it was mixed enough for even the sharpest of ears to mishear, and could just as easily be misquoted in the first place.

Misquoted?

How in the hell do I know he's quoting something?

"Blis-tam.....bring forward-auh-passive icons. Name-over-all.....name cold-bright."

Chill by chill it returned, the stare over all, gaping back. The vibration in Tenchi's knuckles unaffected by the weight of his forehead, he was certain and desperate that hyperventilating could replace sobs. And they did, for the whole and second moment till some morbid, even masochistic curiosity stopped everything for a closer listen. Amazement waited for no proper time to see that Seita was hardly stirring, speaking more clearly, with a piece of something timid.

"Who would so cu-cush---des-air.....art and mercy. Together in-em-brace."

It could even be reverence now, as it actually wasn't pomp, and couldn't be fear.

Tenchi looked up sharply to stare again at the bumper in front of him and the hundreds before it still unmoved. Between moments of wonder, and pleas that this new bitter eeriness would stop, he remembered a professor giving him a few cents about the vertical arrangement of Japanese characters, how perfectly a piece of classic verse or philosophy fitted a wall plaque, and yet could never maintain its immortal power if turned and fitted to a westerner's bumper sticker.

"Ds-eh-kay-shun claimed sov-n---m-their delirium upheld."

Should I wake him?

"Milk of Martyrs---surrender bt-b-k to decay---faith f-ced couplings wit---apathy."

It's impossible, but he almost does sound afraid.

Tenchi waited with a tense scowl for some kind of malicious satisfaction to grasp him, to take some joy from the idea that Seita, of all people, was having nightmares of his own.

There were visions of crying women.

"Beaten---ready retreat---to the white."

With a handful of broken puzzle pieces, he waited for more, sure they would offer no answers and sure that they were important.

"Swallow the ten-ents of self, lest all glory unto all glory become-s-innocence."

No. If I let it out now I might not be able to cut it off.

The saltwater glide went unnoticed as he reached, eyes closed, to position one lever, then the other, listening as closely as he'd been taught. The secured van seemed to idle more contently, its cargo like someone before the sea, staring again with the same awe they'd long devoted to the stars.

"Lest---ll glory-nto-nssense-"

It's really him.

Tenchi rotated his fist, ashamed that he could not completely stop the trembling, tight as he made it.

"White s-nto innocence."

It's still him.

"Cold as innocence."

He was a person.

And Seita's next whisper found its hands, began curling its fingers round and found its teeth, beneath his throat.

"Bright as The Child's Abysss."

Though he didn't strike it dangerously hard, Tenchi increased the pressure on the horn, blind-thinking that this would steadily raise its volume.

He didn't even glance up over at his passenger for nearly half a minute, the horn carrying through half of that. Avoiding whatever the windows might show, he swallowed, heard the passenger seat adjust to a more upright position, and sprang.

As many attentions as he'd drawn with the horn; all of them might have stayed for the blue light. But this was modern Japan, land of daily advances in distraction technology. By this reasoning thus just another reason to show you'd had enough of apathy runoff.

"I want-"

Tenchi spoke, carelessly helplessly distraught. He kept his extended arm steady enough to remain focused on his other hand, the steering wheel. Seita watched his own slow hands fold and hold in his lap, the solid light above them all but unnoticed.

"I want you to know---that Washu deceived us."

Being able to say it gave him a little more confidence, if less than any relief.

"With some careful language she let us believe that you were dead."

Tenchi quieted his breathing by a few levels.

Do I want to give him a chance to respond?

By hardly a twitch, he began to glance over at the passenger, retreating the same way.

No.

"I asked her why you were still alive. And now," Tenchi looked up into the windshield and Seita stared back; overflowing faced hollowed intimidation.

"I'm asking you," timing question to gesture was easy enough. But with the light of the sword closer to his neck, to the underside of his eyes, intimidation tilted in Seita's favor. Tenchi merely tightened his jaw and clarified, much as he knew there wasn't a need.

"Why, after all you said about wanting to be destroyed, have you survived in urban Japan for so long?"

Seita took a long yet almost invisible breath, blinked slowly, and sunk his eyes toward the blade, a student escaping a professor's scorn though their guilt and fear were clearly inspired elsewhere. His hands unfolded, and smoothed---no---moved up the thighs of his pants. Tenchi could only think to bring the blade higher.

"I said:"

Violent promises met confusion as Seita's hands tested the glove compartment, pushed, braced. Tenchi could see the taller man pressing back into his headrest, not for support.

"Why are you-" Barely audible. Hardly intimidating.

The machine was locked and released with only a second for Tenchi to deactivate the sword. He moved the hilt away gracelessly, a child keeping a toy from its younger sibling, hiding its hand from a new pain. Entirely unable to guess whether Seita had truly intended what he'd attempted, Tenchi couldn't consider questions of required physics, even with a laugh. He breathed quick and quiet, staring wildly at the man who'd almost swung his forehead into his knees, who now looked carsick.

Seita lifted his head with the faintest of grins, perhaps all of it on Tenchi's side. He looked at the glove compartment much as his driver had looked at the steering wheel. With the last of the noticeable breaths he could allow himself, Tenchi glanced about with small relief that they seemed to have lost any audience. The practical limits of a light sword inside a minivan began to ooze up like jeering bile, however, Seita's speech floated down in a precise counteraction.

"It would be gratuitous for me to relate that cities in your country are difficult to survive in, even for natives."

Seita closed his eyes for his voice, a fog around his falling feathers.

"Furthermore, it would be lazy to hide behind anecdotes about confessing to someone preconditioned to doubt you."

Gulping his grin away, one less than affected, he began to sit up, eventually resting chin to knuckle, right elbow to left wrist, thinking withdrawal, speaking diplomacy.

"I am still alive because I've been doing domestic work at a youth hostile in exchange for room and board. I am still alive because there was enough in Washu's false paperwork to pay for hospital bills, a new pair of clothing, and a card to carry it in. I am still alive because she left my pre-engineered language center intact."

Gulping ten less than humble, Seita looked out at the train of unmoved cars. The frown was illegible.

"I am still alive because Washu did not kill me. I am still alive because the ghost of my will to learn is heavier than my will to kill myself. I am alive now because you chose not to kill me---there in that hallway."

Tenchi gulped one more than paralyzed. He closed his eyes, he tried to crush the sword in his hand, but everything was memory and the tears maintained an agonizingly slow purge. He could see the swallowed scar in Mihoshi's every move, the murdered friend in Sasami's, the surreal loss of certainty in his grandfather and Washu alike. His helpless father.....helpless as his father, he knew that he had Aeka's heart, that he shared Ryoko's soul. Their wails would claw the sanity from his chest.

"You know that exchange was a bluff---on both our parts, but it was necessary. You---whatever it is you plan---"

He's still afraid.

"And, save that you are taking me to my death, each theory continues to be more absurd than the last."

He's not immortal.

"Each moment complicates my desire to be destroyed, by you, by Washu, by Ryoko, by-"

"You," Tenchi managed to beat the next tear back.

Seita breathed indirect patience for sickly resolve.

"As I said, I have no will to-"

"No," Tenchi pushed aside Seita's resolve like a desperate bully. "You, Washu wants you."

Tenchi pocketed the sword and repositioned his hands on the wheel, his eyes in his lap.

"You have to help us."

He's still Seita.

Memory replaced some of his blood, circulating how his grandfather had recovered only to retreat, how the truth between two rivals had been revealed, the reward for both being a rebirth, dropped cold, unreceived.

The silence eventually stopped counting. And the plain voice was sudden enough to command.

"Tenchi."

Seita gestured with his eyes to the advancing cars before hiding them back outside the window.

"I think the road is clearing."

Seconds before he could get the van moving again a horn behind them made to second the motion.

000

The ambulances parked in the rearview mirror had tightened Tenchi's throat, but as it turned out the accident had meant less than half an hour more travel time. Where the highways became roads the litter became more offensive, then absent when the shopping centers became suburbs, decorative trees losing dog fences and gaining gardens. When more houses became homes the roads became streets, and as many times as he'd passed them he still read the names, looked for changes. How the street became a road, a stranger might have guessed it would just lead back to the beginning. Horizon trees pulled in the sun to strain his eyes along artificially sculpted riverbanks, bridges that blended almost seamlessly with the paving, bridges that did not, and ponds that failed to return in the dry years. The thickening forest finally obscured the sunset.

As they passed the road that shrine visitors would have taken, the pavement turned back to gravel, driving in dust twice in one day, the van would need to be washed.

Maybe I'll get the girls to help me.

Realizing then denying that it was possible to be too good at forgetting horror, Tenchi tried to keep his eyes on the road, the last mile before the gate and whatever Washu could have possibly devised for bringing in a guest unnoticed.

The phone rang and Tenchi tensed, but was thankful not to have jumped.

"Hello."

Washu spoke evenly, if not overly businesslike. Tenchi glanced at Seita, still gazing out the window, probably not sleeping, probably certain whom the driver was speaking to.

"Hi---is everything okay---well yes, there was an accident---on the---on the road I mean, that's why we're a little late---we---yes, he's here---uh---where---how far outside the gate---oh---okay---bye."

He hadn't heard Seita move a muscle, and knew well enough how to keep one ear open on the phone, but when Tenchi glance over again his guest was sitting with better posture, arms folded across his lap, eyes on the house.

You've got to say something before he does, keep him from panicking.

Him---yes.

So long as no one comes running out to meet us for at least a minute we should be okay.

"And now?"

It wasn't terror like before, but Tenchi still gave the steering wheel some subtle abuse.

"Now," he found and thanked a reserve of calm built from the detachment gathered along the road, "we're going to pull up a hundred meters or so from the house, and I'm going to hand you the phone."

Tenchi removed the small device from his taught pocket even more clumsily this time.

"You'll just hold onto it, she'll transport you, and I'll meet you both back in the lab."

How the Hell can Washu sound so calm?

Seita was looking at him, he knew, but he didn't take his eyes off the road, or the phone cradled in his hands as if it were counting the meters left before he could breathe.

"Tenchi."

Waiting, expecting it didn't help when nervousness could sound so much like seduction.

He knows I heard him, why is he waiting so long? Is he waiting for me to look at him when I hand over the phone?

"I apologize for procrastinating this question-"

Oh, Tsunami, please be here.

"But I see that this is likely my last chance."

It was unnatural for Seita to clear his throat, not merely unusual. Tenchi tried not to speed up but still abused the wheel.

"You mentioned asking Washu yourself.....the question.....why I'm still alive."

Melancholy? No.

Dammit, why can't I find any satisfaction that he might be the one afraid for once.

"What did she tell you, Tenchi? Why didn't she kill me?"

Tenchi began applying the brakes early. When they came to a full stop he extended the phone hoping to drop it in his passenger's hand without having to look up from his passenger's ribs. A hand extended under his, slow yet without a trace of ceremony.

And he couldn't let it drop, not just yet, couldn't answer with silence, strike with ignorance. Tenchi didn't like anything about associating Seita and the phrase 'kept in the dark'. The tips of all but human fingers were indistinct against the edges of his palm, and the corners of his voice couldn't help but betray confusion's secret love for desperate hope.

"She says it doesn't matter."

Pulling his hand back but letting it fall in the same movement, Tenchi adjusted to giving the right answer when he'd hardly known. Mantras searched in him till the slight hum of mechanical teleportation received his cargo. It sounded enough like the biological variety that Tenchi didn't resist associating the most obvious memory and didn't try to hold himself up. Uncomfortable as the wheel was for all its tenderizing, strong as everyone would have to be, his sobs held him there, praying guilt that for a while no one would realize he was home.

000

The smell of dinner made the pain in his stomach louder than the alarm of a door that moans more under a gentle hand. Tenchi shrank at the noise and bent at hunger pains as vengeful as any of the memories oppressed so far. They had started eating without him, but it was clear that they had not yet spoken to each other. Naturally they'd heard him enter, and of course they could hear him approach, but apparently he hadn't listened for the difference between plates being cleared and plates being cleared from the table.

"Oh, hi Tenchi." Mihoshi brushed some hair aside with the dry part of her hand and worked up a smile.

"Hi, Mihoshi." In his still slightly bent state, it was understandable, to Tenchi at least, that he chose to give a short nod.

"Don't worry, we saved some for you," Sasami trotted up with a bunched-up towel in her left fist and welcomed him with a hug, also trying not to spread any dishwater. "Washu said you were stuck in traffic, was there an accident?"

She asked the question and waited a moment before moving to look up at him. He hugged her back into him, away from his eyes, and made toward the kitchen without looking down.

Aeka kept her hands in the sink, while Washu leaned against the counter where she should have been drying dishes. Her eyes lifted but her arms remained crossed. Tenchi's voice increased its distance.

"Yeah."

She would have looked as he felt had she looked half as afraid. Within the unspoken understandings that swarmed, garbled and wailing between them, the more obvious fell first. Telling the others that Tenchi was caught in traffic and that they should begin dinner without him was no real deception, save for allowing them the assumption that he'd actually called and told her so himself. He thought he saw her prepare an eighth of a half-smile to relax his worries that they'd been worried. It was no real deception.

"Yeah, Sasami. There was an accident, but it still happened on the faster route."

Washu began to look over at Aeka, then quickly looked the other way, not sure what she wanted to draw attention to. The lines shimmered under her eyes for an even smaller moment.

"Tenchi," she began before he could finish his first compulsive step toward Aeka.

"Tenchi, I-" Aeka interjected her own, incidentally less formal tone in the next second.

Washu sized up the space between them, and both opposite corners. Tenchi froze, also looking at both women, settling on the first when the second decided to take another few moments. Science tried as much as an immobile person could to turn her own fear into a warning. It worked like a difficult breath and Tenchi swallowed it whole, speaking just before it sank in completely.

"Excuse me, Aeka, but I have to help Washu with something first. We'll-"

"Are you guys okay?"

Washu and Tenchi swung their heads back toward the table where Sasami had stopped trying to figure out what to do with the dishtowel, was now holding it like a nearly forgotten comfort blanket and pouring worry out of undeniably loving though unusually mature eyes. When the two looked back at each other they instantly realized it had been the worst possible move. Swallowing like conspirators, feeling little better, Tenchi made room for more worry, letting his eyes drift away from Washu and back to Aeka. She had not turned, and her younger sister did not relent.

"Is something-"

"Hey Sasami," Washu began in an exaggerated whisper.

"Huh.....what?" Confusion blocked out to make a more innocent face.

"Do you think you could keep Mihoshi busy tonight, I've got some important things to take care of." Washu smirked, nodding her head outside to where the now seemingly oldest and clumsiest people in the house were trying to fold away some porch chairs.

A cute conspiracy between clever girls. How Washu had pulled off such a mood change and managed to wield it as well; Tenchi almost gawked as Sasami blinked a few times and hid a faux-scolding smirk.

"Oh, all right, little-Washu. Be careful down there."

Washu turned to him, drained but determined. When she walked toward the lab Tenchi knew he wouldn't be far behind.

"Your plate's in the fridge, Tenchi." Sasami walked more casually past him to hang up the dishtowel.

"Thanks, I'm not really," Tenchi's head was turning even as he spoke, "Aeka, we'll-"

He waited, and waited, and he was going to sweat at this rate.

"Yes, Tenchi."

She knows something's wrong.....she's either going to cry or smack me or-

"Aeka," he forced and he forced and still didn't know, "Aeka, we'll-"

Dammit! Say 'We'll talk later'! Talk later!

"We won't be long."

Tenchi made to point absently toward the lab, but his hand fell, dangled till he made for a fist and failed at that too. In a few moments of waiting for her to respond he became afraid she would respond. Eyes closed, he tried not to hurry away with too much noise.

Aeka turned and watched Tenchi hang his head at the open door to Washu's lab. For half a minute they remained unflinching, till he raised and entered, till she turned back to the dishes with clouded eyes unchanged.

000

Swinging about with a furrowed brow, Tenchi almost didn't notice Washu standing next to him, and hardly changed his expression when he did.

"Washu, what is this?"

Beyond the stern countenance was a meadow of vibrant paper-thin grass nearly tall enough for a girl Washu's size, with humble hair, to lie down and disappear in. The lush green put turquoise to shame and reminded Tenchi of exaggerated tropical brochures, these waters rushing to fantastically curved tree boughs rather than whiteout beaches. The countless tiny, mild periwinkle blossoms made the rough bark crackle under their weight and wonder where the matching sandy cobblestone paths were.

No fountains either, but a short walk ahead, where the trees were thickest, there was the sound of a small river, or a stream with many stones. Again turning his attention to all sides, even the pristine sky, Tenchi looked for the borders, some fence or wall making this all a garden rather than a suspiciously picturesque section of an unknown world. No bunnies, no birds, no fawns, no satyrs.

"This is all just an illusion, right?" Tenchi's displeasure with such surprises was overshadowed by the persistence of his boyish fear.

"No, a relic." Washu stated coldly and began walking toward the promised water.

Tenchi moved to fold his arms, but stormed after her for two steps, felt out of control at four, and was glad to keep pace alongside her. The more she explained the more he hoped her tone would change.

"This is one of the earliest models of what they're now keeping Ryoko in. It's kind of a way to keep someone thinking they're on vacation who is actually serving a sentence. They're banned now, something about cruel and unusual."

Washu began walking more slowly, glancing off to the treetops on her right while Tenchi stared down at her left, then again in every direction, awkwardly trying to stroll rather than shuffle.

"But something more about problems with twisting space; it only occupies about as much area as you can see, but each time we get close to an edge it turns us back in a different direction with a different arrangement of the same landscaping programs."

Washu took a long step over a mostly buried boulder that looked like dolphin skin and leaned forward a bit as she kept walking. Something on her left, Tenchi's left, and he almost hesitated to look at such an obvious indication. The same trees, though each with a seemingly distinct twist to their branches, one or two were even wilting for no apparent reason. She was looking ahead again in the next moment.

"It's kind of like attaching a kaleidoscope to a rodent wheel."

Tenchi wanted to fold his arms, in some way, front or back, whatever might help him feel like he was walking with her rather than being led through another mystery. There was even a nice breeze, a near perfect temperature for swimming, napping, hide and go seek.

I hate---

He finally settled on his pockets.

I hate this. I can't even enjoy what should just be another of her nice little gardens.

A few more stones gathered where the meadow gradually rose into the thicker forest. Tenchi stopped and stared in disbelief as Washu almost tripped over one. She tried, halfheartedly, to play it off like a skip. She kept walking and Tenchi caught up with simple strides. The first trees were tall and independent enough that he hardly needed to duck or twist on their path. There was still plenty of, he realized now, sunless sunshine to make the shadows look like shade.

Their footsteps were louder now, as was the water, as was the silence of everything else. Tenchi tried to time how often he glanced over for some emotion on Washu's face, but it just made the constricted place seem deceptively large. It only slowed time.

"You could have killed him, you know."

Tenchi watched the petals grinding into moist earth beneath them. He tensed, ready to shake, hurrying himself to decide whether she'd meant her statement as a reprimand, or as a missed opportunity. His haste fueled confusion till the two-bird answer fell from the sky before he could appreciate how obvious it was.

"Sorry."

If it sounded insincere, it wasn't. And if it sounded insignificant, it wasn't. Tenchi looked up and tried to look ready.

I can---I have to do this---if it means I have to cut him open or shake his hand---

Tenchi looked back down.

"He's about as frail as the average human now."

He nodded too faintly to imagine she'd seen it.

"You, Tenchi, are not."

Tenchi allowed himself frustration, convinced he was too drained for rage.

Just wait till Ryoko gets a hold of him then. That's right, say that. Idiot.

Washu stopped, taking a break had she needed one. Tenchi watched her reach up and wrap her palm against the underside of a large branch, holding it there as she thought.

This must be her idea of making me more ready for the---for the prisons this time, or to put me at ease when she explains how the HELL we're supposed to-

He leaned against a tree trunk with a locked arm, wishing he had a branch to break off.

"So, where is he, anyway?"

Tenchi felt worse, but stronger. Hopefully Washu would get to business now.

Ryoko---

Forcing an image of Seita sitting, bending forward in a doctor's chair, speaking to her till she closed her eyes, cried and cried and cried till she embraced him back when he reached out. Tenchi's arm bent against the tree.

"He should be around here somewhere." Washu stated, nearly sighed, much like looking for a pencil in a toolbox when somebody might be listening.

Tenchi stared at the sickest joke in any language.

Washu kept walking, her companion following with slow, long steps, and wild glances into every other shadow and every single gleam.

The pieces approached slow, but were eager to be more fit.

"I guess I see why you were talking so softly on that last phone call."

Though his tone was losing life, Washu's gained none.

"Risky planning on my part, but at least it made you look considerate and me---up to less."

Tenchi glanced over with the beginnings of sarcastic venom, but felt ill at ease staying focused in any one direction.

"So," he tried a pathetic breathless chuckle, "did you have a tracking device put in his ear or something."

"No, I had him put in here so that I wouldn't have to check him first, and wouldn't have to leave the table."

"You mean," a little more breath this time, "you haven't even looked at him yet?"

Stomping still, Tenchi's fingertips tested the sides of his head, reaching the puppet stick over his flailing grimace.

Washu stopped, and moved her head to speak over her shoulder with no real intention of looking back.

"Would you like to prepare me, Tenchi?"

Is she being SARCASTIC?!

Before he could consider how to raise the accusation, Washu began walking downward. They'd apparently reached the top of the hill without even noticing. Beyond her he could see the stream, clear water over black stones, flanked by spindly, leafless black trees.

"Washu."

He hoped it could sound as much like a warning as a plea, but it seemed to have no effect regardless. Tenchi walked, long steps, but he kept them weary, if not as quiet.

Maybe---maybe she does realize how insane this is.

Washu veered slightly to the left, and Tenchi followed, almost feeling like he was sneaking up on her.

But this isn't 'just crazy enough to work'; it's her daughter. It's Ryoko.

Tenchi clenched his fists and bit down on the weight, the stones in his lungs and the tar in his bones wanted him to look. If he opened both his eyes at once, they could break him, then he could drag what was left to her, he could pull her to him and cry till nothing.

He stopped to push over another tree. Strong, full, calm breath.

Washu was walking slower. Tenchi followed. She began to step lightly, then to the left. When she hid behind a tree he did the same. One tree, seeing nothing around either side, became another, till all of Tenchi's stealth brought him up behind Washu. The trunk she chose could hardly hide them both, even if she'd had humbler hair.

"Do you see him?" Tenchi asked in a moderate whisper, not even bothering to see around her side of the tree. There was nothing but a steeper descent and the stream on his own.

"No."

Tenchi took a step back and watched his hands clench.

"Washu, what are we doing here? How do we know-"

He tested his scalp, seriously considered letting go, pulling till he had his pain in his fists.

"That's precisely the point, Tenchi." Washu turned and leaned against the tree trunk.

When she looked at him, unborn tears and deep underlines, green was emerald, smooth and clear from the heat of ages. Her fear was different, and this helped Tenchi realize that he did not want his to equal it. Putting trust in another person to help the only person, putting it outside reason then outside reason's reach. He couldn't maintain a simpler fear and still not look as confident.

"He's in here with us, but what we need from him, we'll never get it if we can't stop thinking of him as the wolf in the forest."

Washu visibly shrank, eyes to the ground under Tenchi's feet.

"He's not going to jump up from a trap door, he's not going to fly out of a tree. Even if he's spent these last months training to be an assassin....."

Does she want me to reassure her that he hasn't?

"No, this is my waiting room, but this is no longer a cell. He is here at our disposal, but he's-"

Washu leaned forward and off the tree, gently, absently holding her own forehead with a soft palm, then her mouth. She pulled herself into Tenchi's arms without a thought. His hands flexed above her shoulders for a moment before he spread them around her back. Making sure she wasn't crying, relieved for this, he took another look around and let his own eyes drag his head down.

"But," Washu swallowed painfully, "but before-"

Tenchi felt a tremor of fear as she clutched his lapels. She pushed herself back and held them both up with flat palms, her tone cooled but stayed alive.

"He was the greatest counselor in his galaxy."

Suspicion fell like a shimmering needle into a punchbowl of ice water. If it was a compliment, even if it was still justification, Tenchi remembered his mother. He was ready, as soon as Washu took her next breath, to push her against the tree till she heard herself.

Across the stream, up another picturesque bank, someone was walking without stealth. Tenchi tilted, then glanced back as Washu took her hands from him. In seconds she'd secured her hair. He pressed his back to the tree and leaned around it again, sure that Seita was still far enough away not to notice them.

"There's another reason," Washu spoke at his side more quietly than some whispers.

"What?" Tenchi whispered even lower.

"Did you see how the trees around the stream were dead, how the stream was clean and clear yet everything around it was black?"

"Y-yeah, so?" Tenchi let his own curiosity hang out.

Washu readjusted some of her hair. Wound-guilt traced fear.

"Look---see if he notices too."

Tenchi, convinced he was ready to step out from the tree the moment he was spotted, peered around, thankful that Seita was watching his footing. He looked for satisfaction or relief in the trouble still had in using such a grounded body. Much as justifiable sadism had failed him before, he could feel his face sinking now as the tall figure looked up and down the stream like someone surveying the smoldering foundations of a home.

"It was a common symbol for a time."

Washu gave away some warmth, and Tenchi moved back to catch it, hands still in his pockets wherever they were. She looked up at him again, no tears, no lines, nothing but strangled uncertainty till she turned to the side, ready to speak over her shoulder, through the trees, into her reacquired prisoner.

"They called it 'empty-water'. Clear as crystal, yet it turns life black, a way to remind them that the essence of living things was out of their reach. The program turns it back into light the moment anyone tries to drink it, or drown in it."

Again, more carefully, Tenchi stole a look. Seita was crouched beside the stream, pinching his chin, thinking himself pale.

"I'm going to explain our case to him now. Please watch, and join us if you are seen."

Tenchi looked over and stepped back, almost having to bite his tongue to suppress a yelp. It might even have been endearing, might have been attempting so, but Washu's adult form didn't carry the same allure this time. Her eyes avoided his, her formal green pant and blouse combo replaced by a neck-strangling coal dress. No décor, no nostalgia, and little sound as she let it drag over the fallen petals. Regal and imposing as she may have looked in a different setting, her stride was less than informal, the way a carefree plant would stroll, the way a tired Goddess would approach.

From his vantage point, Tenchi was surprised at how long it took Seita to look up from the water. This next observation added that 'empty' also meant it caught no fallen petals and gave no reflections, save of false sunlight. Washu was standing directly across the stream, no more than three meters, when the empty gaze decided to acknowledge her. Too far to hear them, much less make out their expressions, he let his palm test the bark of the nearly-real tree.

Please, don't say she expects me to be her bodyguard.

No, of course not.

Even if she says her lab won't be at full power for a while---she could probably kill him faster than I could.

Washu held her hands, loosely dangling in her lap, and stepped forward to stand in the stream. Shin deep, it soaked the edges of her dress and let the program convincingly turn coal into onyx. The contrast of her pale face and hands, her brilliant if tightly subdued red hair, standing there before what may as well be a vagrant, Tenchi felt his mouth fall and his brow rise. The thought came and went at its leisure, that this was a scene almost worthy of its audience.

No sooner had he prepared to consider this more deeply than the blossoms began to fade in and out and through each of the eyes of the women in his extended family. Seamless as the wind that moved it, the colors kept Tenchi all but hypnotized that it could look so natural, so like any accelerated autumn. He did not see how this setting would give the scientist more resolve than a darkened room with a restraining chair.

Still they stared at each other, hardly seeming to breath, till Tenchi nearly readied himself to jog down at them, if only to cut this silence that had long turned tangible sadness back on and through itself. The same stitch, sewing its self, waiting for blood.

Washu chose to speak first, and as Tenchi strained to hear her he began to move and count down how many trees still grew between them.

"You told me the truth."

Washu watched her hands, still holding each other low against her dress.

"You told me who you were, and as thorough as Kagato may have been---there are still a few traces left."

Tightening her fingers, she lifted her eyes as if solemn could best serene.

"In a small publication, you wrote an essay on the use of things like 'empty water' in holo-prisons. You called it malicious, petty."

Seita casually stirred his fingers into the stream, only looking at it for a moment before he lifted his hand, the door to the tunnel of his gaze, a hollowing secret held like poison. He turned the cup over and let the water spill from his palm.

"Did you want my help designing better prisons, professor?"

A tilt of the head so slight, then sharp, the eyes narrowing up half a grin for double edges. Tenchi could see, a few meters closer now, that Seita was looking directly into her. A few seconds breathing behind the tree, and at the second glance she seemed unaffected, while the glare might have lost some luster.

"No, I want you to lead a jailbreak."

Tenchi echoed and magnified the disbelief he saw in the consuming blue. It was all his own when Seita lowered himself altogether. The breeze in the blossoms tried to die in gold amid the silent minute.

"I see, it's-"

Seita began massaging his hands together, keeping his fingers flat as wings or flags. Having neither solemn nor serene did not prevent him from setting them at each other's throats.

"It's your daughter---I presume."

"Yes."

Two more trees before he'd surely be spotted, he could almost hear them now.

He rested against the tree and felt the energy leaving him, not sure if it was rising into the trees as the last of gold hurried through yellow and back into natural pinks.

"My---'talents' were never especially---"

Washu remained unmoved, even as she went from watching the stream move her dress to crawling her eyes up to where Seita would have to meet them. The fallen petals changed color again as he balanced his crouch with fingertips posed for a pyramid. One hand tried to smear some into the earth; those that were not buried or planted continued to change in unison with the rest.

From the small distance, Tenchi was more certain now of Seita's fear, lifting empty into ancient ocean, than he was with a guest close enough to touch. One tree away, doubting that he hadn't been heard yet, Tenchi could make out even their soft voices.

"Your talents-"

Washu waded forward, hands still unmoved, till they were nearly in range of each other.

"-are gone."

Seita looked down, but not away, rose to his feet, but did not stand. Tenchi sidestepped, removed the sword, and held it at his side. The taller man stepped into the stream like a spotlight he did not want to acknowledge.

Please---Please

"All you have now-"

Their eyes never wavered, never pitied, only strength-for strength if only a glass husk left for strength-the strength to hold pain. They were more than close enough to embrace, Washu's hands held in front, Seita's hanging lifeless at his sides.

"-are your gifts."

Tenchi began a mantra inspired by all that he'd done to convince himself of Washu's safety, of her being more dangerous than any Jurai weapon. His own steps forward were still decisively more cautious. If he was going to understand the meanings in this he'd have to be more than he was.

Washu's keeping both of us in suspense, but with him---she won't even tell me and she expects him to figure it out?!

Emerald seemed to relent, closing her eyes and lowering her face.

"Tenchi," she called.

He hesitated his next step, then slowed the pace of those left to bring him to the edge of the stream. One of the blackened trees nearly scratched his cheek, and he broke it away without a second thought. Seita glanced over her, showing neither foreknowledge nor surprise.

"Do you love Ryoko?

It came so bluntly and with such finality that Tenchi almost dropped the sword.

"Y-Yes." He said while intending to take a breath. He swallowed nothing and was met with only the necessary memories.

"Seita."

He glanced back down to meet her eyes with a returning frenzy behind his own.

"Do you trust Tenchi?"

The taller man's brow maladjusted, and his bottom lip nearly quivered open. He was slightly more composed when he stared a long moment that the younger man failed to return.

"He never seemed to question," velvet grew in the warm darkened places, the scent between green and black, "whether our recent exchange had been real."

Seita glanced down at Washu, who also continued to avert her eyes. Something softened, or burned away in his face, the fumes carrying richness into his stare.

"Tenchi."

The near-prince of Jurai blinked rapidly in disbelief and faced Abyss without a thought.

"I know what it is to be at someone else's mercy."

Tenchi felt it clearly, that 'I' meant 'we', on both ends of the experience.

"But you still strike me as a particularly merciful person."

A distortion of light made Tenchi wince away then stare back to see Washu in her smaller formal suit.

Seita stared down at her as well, a darker fear creasing his features. Only he heard her speak.

"We shall see."

She reached lazily to the side and touched her holo-keypad the moment it faded into view.

A focal point formed where the two ancient figures stood, sending blackness deeper than the stream to erase the forest. In moments Tenchi could see only them and himself, perfectly, though surrounded by unlit black space. Metallic ropes pulled Seita into a restraining chair quickly enough for Tenchi to share only half of his horror as they sank his tall legs into the floor till he was eye to eye with the genius child.

Washu, like a humorless imitation of an earth doctor, fitted a latex glove over her right hand.

"What's going on?" Tenchi nearly gasped, his next step toward them prompted an answer.

The gloved little hand shot into Seita's neck like a viper, holding his vital cords with enough pressure to swell agonized confusion into the most piercing blue.

Tenchi's breaths raced past the a-rhythmic chokes, gathering speed in sight of his opponent's handicap. And, as they became more strained and greedy, he felt them working up a smile. He grabbed the back of his neck, the emergency break, with both hands.

"Washu! What-What are you doing?!"

"I don't know how gratifying it was to strike him, to really strike him," Washu's monotone was fraying around the edges, but kept eating at its own core to keep its teeth wet.

Seita, eyes closed like melt-wadded balloon rubber, teeth ready to spring, was not convinced he could, but was desperate to break the chair.

"But I can assure you this is better."

Tenchi emitted a struggling effect that filled in for the one restrained as well as it matched the one conflicted.

"D---Dammit Washu! This isn't-"

"No Tenchi, it isn't," a stillborn maniacal laugh managed one twitch upon the floor, "this isn't a demonstration, and this isn't just another experiment."

He thought he noticed her loosening her grip as Seita achieved some measure of consistency in his strangled breaths.

"I'm not sure why you didn't bring back his head, Tenchi. I hoped that it was for Ryoko's sake, I still hope that more than anything. But---I know it could be because you still don't like killing---that you saw how miserable and pitiful he was and you just couldn't."

Washu sounded no less dangerous, no less frightening with more control. Tenchi tried then retreated from imagining her eyes.

"But make no mistake, Tenchi, he still thinks he has power, he still thinks-"

"N---n-n....."

Washu straightened her posture and relaxed her grip long enough for Seita to manage two violent coughs. Hardly increasing the pressure, she moved her hand up closer to his jaw.

"Be quiet."

Tenchi, in weak reflex, took a step toward her, hands outstretched but mostly upturned.

"Tenchi."

She was serious, she was nowhere near the calm she imitated, but she was serious.

"I'm going to give you a second chance."

He looked at her with anxious confusion, but was guided over to Seita's face, head angled up as far as he could, eyes closed as tight as possible without looking it, mouth clenched in a frown to make the wearer disappear.

"Say the word, Tenchi, and I'll do it, now, I'll avenge this family and every other."

Letting his arms dangle after a sad attempt to move, he didn't know where, Tenchi just stared.

I---I can't do that!

"I've done unethical things before---and I can assure you---this won't count especially high on my list."

She was breathing a little more heavily now as well, but her reassurance had become a background to the returning memories, the worst ones replaying with the most clarity. He closed his eyes and swallowed them.

Yes I could.

Eyes still closed, he listened to her voice descend.

"I don't know what I was thinking.....I.....I want my daughter back. I-"

Tenchi pulled at his sinus, wiped the wet away to notice that Washu had taken on a shiver.

"Whatever I saw that day, whatever it was that made me send him away---if you don't see it too, if you're not sure it's there---then say the word. I'd rather have his blood on my hands than yours.....than Ryoko's."

Opening his mouth to speak, he reached for his own throat, his fingers wilting when they got too close.

"Very well then."

Washu pulled her hand away with a robotic melodrama, holding it up like a traffic signal as she pulled off the glove, finger by finger, a stretched snap into the steady coughs. With the newly freed hand she reached into her hair and shook it free. Sidestepping directly between them, she extended both arms, leaning a rising gasp into Seita's raw throat.

"I understand how it could still seem wrong for you. We'll do it this way, then."

The false softness where she wallowed her stone voice threatened physical illness on Tenchi, now, and for perhaps the rest.

"I'm going to keep applying pressure, if you want me to stop---if you truly want me stop---just say so."

Tenchi found his voice barehanded, a tin can lid in a pile of rancid organic garbage.

"Bringing him here was your idea! How the hell do you expect him to help us now?!"

"I don't. Do you?"

Tenchi began to pace between modes of panic. In the moment it took to notice the discoloration in Seita's face he froze and poured his horrified gaze onto his physician.

"Please." Tenchi barely heard it in his own throat.

"This is monstrous of me, I know, but unless you really think he can save...if you really want him that close to---"

She had to be crying, he thought, looking over at Seita once more, convulsing with stifled mucus grunts, eyes clenched then swung open. A threat or a plea, he turned away before he could ask.

He reached toward where he'd seen her shoulder, still unwilling to look. At contact, he opened his eyes, looking at the floor, the weight eclipsing the hollow, gold catching sun from the core of The Pit.

"Ryoko."

Tenchi could feel her arms begin to relax in the next moment.

"Please Washu," he swallowed his sob, "we have to-"

In an instant, far too quickly he thought, Washu folded her hands behind her back and turned to face him. He almost tripped backward in surprise.

"It's decided then."

Her face, herself: dry, focused, and unyielding. Behind her the coughs were small infernos smothered by flagship sails catching wider and wider winds.

"By your judgment---he deserves enough life for the chance to save another."

Her champion looked helplessly from her, to her secret weapon, and back.

"Please listen closely, Tenchi. Tomorrow you'll take the shuttle to see Ryoko again, you'll give me the signal when you get inside with her, and I'll transport him over."

Washu began to turn, but stopped as she heard the small spark of life in Tenchi's throat. Though she hadn't intended to, she looked up into whatever might be left to risk her plan.

Her champion just stared, mouth half-agape, at the chair behind her. Turning again, she saw her prisoner, head lax on his neck, chest rising and rising. It nearly lifted his chin before it fell again. She took half of the step between them.

"It must have been awful for you," Washu contemplated with an obscure kind of sympathy, too cold to be sarcasm, "wondering whether you owed me a debt of gratitude---or another eye."

Seita did not respond, save to release the inhalation as a sign that he'd heard her.

"You can be certain now that you owe me nothing; your debt lies with Tenchi, as should your trust."

Washu walked three steps adjacent to them and reached into darkness to touch holo-keys. Seita's restraining unit shifted into a seat, the binds retracting. He slumped forward a little, bracing one forearm across his lap, the other hand reflexively smoothing his throat. No sign of meeting their stares.

"Ryoko has been entirely unresponsive to all contact, if you can return enough of her perception to motivate her out of that cell, we will proceed from there."

Tenchi felt her gaze upon him within moments and flailed his own back. The desperation swam in at the corners as she gestured for him to add his peace. Exhausted, he let himself, all but lazy, he let himself.

"Seita," he began in as clear if not as hopeful a voice as he could, "will you help us?"

He lifted his head enough for them to see the first layer of his eyes. Whatever his emotions, they were also laid raw with exhaustion.

"In the city---I've had a number of opportunities---to 'council' others."

He pulled his velvet stocking inside out, making a dull cotton scarf, a bandage.

"I've taken none of them."

Tenchi began to look towards Washu, but was taken back.

"And still I've forgotten nothing of my time before Kagato," he continued, "and nothing since."

In the moment he took to swallow, Tenchi felt the weight change its texture, its mass, from iron, to wood, to blood.

"For however long my mind lasts, I will do what I can to help you."

Washu caught Tenchi's drained face, then hid her own beginnings of overflow.

"Please wait in my office, I'll try to keep preparations brief." Washu spoke into her keys, uninterested that Seita's chair sank into the darkness without a sound.

Tenchi stood there watching stillness for nearly a minute.

"You've surpassed my expectations, Tenchi." She tried and mostly failed to breach the ice she'd accumulated.

He breathed, then nearly laughed to think he might actually have had the energy to speak. A hopeful vision of Ryoko though, if only a ribbon, gave him enough to turn and wait for the lights leading to an exit. When they appeared before him, Washu stepped to his side, moving to escort him before he could be too startled.

"Get some rest if you can."

"You, too."

Overspent android to delirious ghost, they walked to the other side of the closet door.

"Tenchi?"

"Hm?"

"Ryoko loves you."

Tenchi faced the door diagonally, nearly forgetting which direction he was turning from. He closed his eyes and nodded as slow and certain as frightened could be.

"And so do I."

All the reassurances she might have added came as she cradled the back of his head and pulled him for a tighter embrace. He believed it, and returned it. She held him by the elbows then, at arm's length, looking into his chest.

"And in her own way, so does Aeka."

Washu turned and walked, leaving him and his even more desiccated face imitating an outstretched hand.

"Do what you have to, Tenchi.....do what you think is right.....but don't tell her about our pact. It-"

She stopped walking for a moment then continued on with precise confidence.

"It would not help us; and there's no need to risk anything more."

000

"You went to her then?"

"Yes."

"And you could not help her?"

"No---n-that is, not the way I hoped."

It had been dark outside when he emerged from the lab. Late in the evening, early in the morning, he tried not to remember the last time he'd gone a day without rest. Maneuvering to avoid the direction of every clock in the house, he noticed Aeka sitting on the couch almost instantly. No television. No book. She'd offered a walk in such a delicate voice that she might as well have been expecting a lecture. From him, of all people.

His thoughts lilted in the breeze, only scratching in sand against the tide of Aeka's radiance to restrained agony.

That numb exchange passed in the first steps from their home. They were halfway to the lake before he heard her breathe again. Now the hesitation was killing him, they'd already started off speaking distantly and that was bad enough. Childish hopes crawled in that the pain in his chest had to be two, that one might smother the other, but they only ever stopped to refuel when he glanced over. She kept watch over the ground in front of them for longer than Tenchi could take as a blessing.

Their first steps onto the dock reminded him, unmercifully, of dreaming, the dream itself as certain. Drained of what it took to roar or weep, he felt certain that his skin would simply crumble away in its stead. Slightly more than half empty, the moon lay against the water, waiting or resigning. Aeka stopped walking only a few steps from land.

"This time that you've been gone.....I've tried to accept that I should not ask of Washu's plans, I've even tried not to wonder if---if she has any."

Tenchi prepared the look of disbelief intended for her, but only managed to apply it to the lake, to the wood beneath them.

000

The artless metallic office, as much like a bomb shelter as a workspace, was so sterilized of sound that the nail clippers would surely have echoed were echoes allowed. Seita sat back in an office chair, reclining toward the first inch of affectation, while Washu leaned forward, hands closed into each other and resting on her desk. Complete patience came as an easy formality after maintaining an expectant stare so complete.

"I will say first that I do not expect you to explain the motives of your decision."

She frowned slightly, waiting for a reaction on the symmetry of expectations, desires, and plans, waiting for swift violence. She prepared herself to be worn down by a slight of hand from the corner of his mouth.

He'd finished the remaining fingers before she accepted that he had no response. Having collected the trimmings in one hand, he rechecked the work on his other. It was enough like stalling or avoidance to mean he'd need more before he could consider a direct response. Washu casually sat up and brought a small wastebasket, holding it out to him as mundanely as she could without being rude. He looked up, but only at the container and the few spaces above it. She watched his hands brush each other clean with a touch or waste of elegance. The tension spread through her, wild and uncoordinated enough to purge in small time.

"All that machinery---" his familiarly smooth voice, though its confidence seemed fused with despair, stopped her halfway back to her desk. She lifted her head to imply that she'd paused only to give him immediate recognition, only for his sake, rather than her throat's.

"None of them suspected." A living, bleeding statement, but a halfhearted imitation of a statement-question.

Washu remembered and knew the scenery leading from the sub-elevator to her detached workstation.

If he was right then she'd achieved her objective, even in the face of carelessly testing Yosho's trust, and her own capacity to deceive without dishonesty.

If Seita was right then she would allow herself even less than whatever his satisfaction.

Washu moved to set the wastebasket down.

"This family is made of trusting people."

Less than an accidental show of affectation, the child-sized genius retook her seat, awaited and regained his attention.

000

"Do you intend to try again?"

He knew how much it hurt to hear such a joyless voice remain sweet and delicate, and he knew how desperately he wanted her not to ask questions she knew the answers to. If he had absolutely no idea yet how to measure it, he understood even less the desire for her to call him 'Lord Tenchi' again.

"Yes."

He imagined this was how a prisoner robbed of rest and enriched with truth serum would sound. It was undoubtedly how they would feel.

"Tenchi."

Aeka bowed her head a little lower, then brought it all the way up to face the entire waiting lake.

"You know I've offered my heart to you already, did you expect me to offer my assistance?"

000

Washu tried again to look, expecting the test to remind her that she and Tenchi were both worthy, both free. She began to wish Seita back into the restraints, never believing it would help her look directly at him, though his torso told her clearly enough that he was attempting no intimidation and only a faint pulse of dignity, human dignity at that. The search for guilt in her tactics failed again to distract their shame; she'd been as uncertain as Tenchi during the entire ordeal, horrifyingly uncertain from the moment Seita had opened survived eyes to her. However successful the test had been, that was all there could be now, no questions, only tests. She needed her love for her daughter to inspire her on, and she needed to be heartless to face the task ahead.

Vengeance had died in her hands, but the corpse was too heavy and septic to move. It would continue to rot where it was, wherever she was. And time frightened her as she did not remember. There would have to be another risk, another test, chance for chance that hope could be their fate. She could not cry, not plea, not rethink that transfer debt. But if she could imagine the cruelest part of Tenchi, then she could lift her eyes back into Seita's with the power of suppressed ambitions that felt like memories.

"You are no longer a psychologist."

Some small waver in his restrained blankness, possibly only physical; yet he could not be allowed to back down now. Washu followed up with a stronger injection of the same doctor's promise.

"And this is not reverse-psychology."

His breathing became more pronounced, more rapid, his eyes gaining color and commanding her to advance.

"But if you think you know my intentions, then by all means."

Washu sat back in her chair, folded her arms, and let out her breath on a weightless ribbon.

Seita remembered the first signs of his glare and titled grin but made no effort to fully hide more fear than he could contain. As expected, he lowered his head before he spoke.

"I found it odd.....that you proclaimed such confidence in Tenchi, yet were willing to let him give up so quickly."

000

"Aeka, I don't want anything from you, I-"

The First Princess tried to gradually deflect the weight on her brow down, and away.

Tenchi closed his eyes into his throat.

"That's not what I meant."

"It was....."

Had he fallen from a plain to the ground the pressures matching each other in his throat and stomach would have glared, unimpressed. Tenchi began to reach for her, ready to throw his arms around her and crush the world back to that moment on the porch, that moment which could be what he'd tried to make it if he just fought hard enough, if he just forced till the weight killed him.

The film of Ryoko's despair throbbed on his palms.

"It was hard for me to imagine giving it."

"What?"

"How.....how could anyone help her more than you?"

Tenchi's level of pain, ready to reach entirety faster than any before, was distracted by a reflection, an obvious tilt in her voice; Aeka was hiding some part of her sincerity.

If he could only hold her.

"Aeka."

His hands ready.

"Please try to understand."

And he remembered that holding all his love to someone could still fail.

When Aeka turned to look at him, to bear her bitterest tears and deepest need, he was staring down at nothing, his eyes taken back into distant eyes.

000

"If I ever believed, even by force, that he could reach her, then I did."

Washu did not allow her eyes to darken, but she could feel her entire face begin to quiver.

"When I no longer believed---that I could reach her---"

Seita's joyless insight waited not a moment longer than necessary.

"Your first thoughts were not of him."

Again, he remembered and feared himself with dying restraint. Washu bit a tiny portion of her lip and nearly smiled, no longer fearing how her disbelief in fate would serve in a battle against it. She blinked to reassure the dryness of her eyes, and ventured back into the waning cracks on the gate over the abyss.

"No, but my deepest hope still is."

His will, unspeakable and misplaced in all aspects of existence, gathered itself and stared back. What there was of fear and what there could be of malevolence flashed a challenging wall. He lowered his head again, the seed of doubt ceremoniously planted, and shared.

000

"No Tenchi, there is nothing left."

Her voice crawled into his consciousness, ice brambles, charred pins, dragging him away by the tendons. Tenchi's pained disbelief shattered the bearings in his eyes. They began to waver and dart about like the panic of a small animal with a freshly broken back.

"I can not allow you to continue after a hopeless cause."

He'd known in moments and felt in less how well she also understood; this went back, through, and beyond any references to her own emotional pursuits.

Tenchi looked at her as closely as he could. With a posture that froze diplomacy and mimicked Washu's own approach to all things prisoner, Aeka hid her hands together beneath the sleeves of her robe, her eyes beneath the shadow of her hair, and the soul of her breath behind a thin iron line.

This is it.

No longer trapped between opposing tidal waves, he was perilously balanced on the intertwined roots of two dying trees, the water to sustain them quivering in his core, a promise more evident than counted rings that life for one would mean death to the other.

I have to tell her, even if I can't make her understand.

And as more and thus, there a threat that abandonment would wail up into all shadows cast by the new life. The decay of the one would spread into and poison the other.

---But tell her that there is one last chance, that you and her can be together if Ryoko-

The demon spoke his name and he opened his mouth to answer or give back the soul that belonged in her voice, he did this as he knew he might and would for the rest of his days.

Abandon one to lie to the other? Is that my only choice?

The tear became trapped in the corner of his nose, he closed his eyes, moved to wipe it, and nearly bit his hand.

No.

He stepped toward Aeka.

But I have to embrace her, I have to try to love her too, as much as I can.

"I beg you," Aeka tore back the flesh beneath her nails to dig out and offer up the last of life's strength. Every part of Tenchi stopped.

"Leave her where she belongs."

He widened his eyes in disbelief, such an impassioned voice traded in for the strength of the dead.

000

"So then." Washu let her breath die in her hands and rose from her seat.

Seita held his position against the shadow of her.

"As I was saying," She watched every inch of the chair as she pushed it back into the desk, but waited for his attention unflinchingly as she spread her hand over holo-keys. Half the sound sheet metal makes before it touches thunder, but Seita made an effort not to notice the room's disassembly.

"You are no longer a psychologist."

The bottom of a canyon, bathed in the light of technological mountains, the elevator that was umbilical cord retracted into the ceiling like a mollusk's eye, passing a height where the sharpest could see only blackness.

"This is not reverse psychology."

Washu stepped towards him, hands behind her back, eyes reaching down before the pit was yet uncovered. She stood still, in easy range, as the last of her office disappeared with a dull thud.

"But your access to the mind is unmatched in the universe."

Seita lifted his head, but only enough to rest his mouth and face against his intertwined fingers. The decision, final and difficult, evaporated into higher forms behind closed eyes, before a vivid and unmerciful gaze that climbed back up the offering of Washu's hope.

Looking into his knuckles as he lifted his head, looking into his fingertips as they tested the space between them.

"If you don't mind," the guest intoned as he had, as he remembered his beginning.

Washu watched his fingertips connect, the pyramid closing like a bud, her eyes following, now with more certainty than the all she had hoped for.

"I'll find my own route."

000

If Tenchi had ever tried to imagine the cruelest part of himself, it had been an ordeal shorter even than the necessary insanity of trying to imagine the most human part of Seita. This time was no different, save to know that the time spent before had always been enough.

He felt his hands clench at his sides, a year of exhaustion purging, inverting into force. Thoughts that needed no distance from their emotions, that slowed for no barrier, rolled out of his mouth in a heat haze, hushed for consuming both fog and dust.

"Aeka?! H-How can you say that?"

"Tenchi," she tried to order and failed to restrain her tears even more miserably, "that woman, even if she was your friend before-"

"Stop it."

He felt her mouth sag at the taste of metal in his own. It spread over his teeth, fortifying his jaw as densely as his eyes, even as first love looked inside, bleeding.

No more. I can't fail now, I can't allow self-righteous cruelty, even if I have to swallow all of it myself.

Aeka looked ready to back away, or to tip over like an imperfectly molded porcelain figure.

"T-T-Tenchi! What's wrong with you?"

"With me?" Tenchi felt it spread up from the ore crushed in his frown, a conqueror's marble gilding his mind's voice. "No."

This has to end.

000

Seita's sweat glistened bright, almost crystalline on his stubble-waned skin.

Washu did not expect his eyes to burst open, did not expect his teeth to bare for another minute or more.

She did not move, did not look away from the blood howling red on his neck, from the white warring on his knuckles and fingertips.

His chest had filled past what appeared natural, deflating only when it simply had to threaten an explosion.

Washu watched, arms crossed, eyes found precisely between skin and glass, eons away from fearing explosions.

000

"No, let's talk about what's wrong with Ryoko. That's the issue here. That's the question killing everyone!"

Aeka's eyes stole away what little color remained in her cheeks.

"How we could have just let her disappear.....how I could have cursed her for abandoning us-"

000

Eyes crushed beneath Seita's brow, more so when he opened them. The glare was aimed at the floor, but Washu recognized this break, this acceptance of new tactics, as a sign of expected reversions.

His teeth were showing less now than when they'd threatened to break, and Washu could estimate just enough space left open for him to run his tongue between them. A slight squint and the wet pink of it became the white of soldiers' eyes. Drummers died against their skins, falling thin and round onto the earth.

Chaos and genius met their anticipated reaction, and everything it had become.

Seita did not show affectation, much less concern for the lack of apparent fear in her. He conceived a chuckle, growing sinister, living maniacal, till his fingers threatened to slide apart for the bellows of joyless triumph.

Washu watched as she had, from a former heart yet still a hand of triumph.

000

Tenchi wrapped the silence of the night around his throat, a tourniquet that yet allowed the poison to bleed out.

"Her mind was enslaved, for centuries she was forced to rob and murder countless people," the binding strangled him as he swallowed back his own reactions to the words, "and then she was imprisoned, entombed for centuries more."

Aeka brought a mortified sleeve up to her mouth, trembling the shell of a scream behind it. She made to turn away, but was halted.

"And then---what does she encounter when she's finally set free?"

"Tenchi, please." Aeka closed her eyes on a progressing flow, stepping back.

Her dream, host, and blood stepped forward.

"And on a shaky peace, she's taken by Kagato, then clay, and then-"

"Stop it!"

The holler that would have sent a thousand Jurains into flight, that should have brought the guardians, merely gave Tenchi the next moment's pause.

000

Seita stood, the office chair overturned beside him, elbows locked into his pelvis, hands receiving a star's fangs, pale upturned neck ready to bleed out the black of space. A blossom of shadows radiated around both him and his essentially unmoved audience. Yet the light was provided, as it had been, by the surrounding machinery rather than the white hole in existence suspended before him.

It moved less than Washu at the meeting between his collarbones, where it might have lodged had he swallowed it, as he could have, like a small coin or large pill.

Minutes had passed, and minutes more till his breathing began to level, though still more than adequate to sustain a long run as a competitor.

000

"Why her, Aeka? Why not any one of us?"

Aeka continued to sob into her masking sleeves, seemingly oblivious, while Tenchi finally began to drain at the sound and sense of his own opened voice.

"If it is because of all she's been through, would that take our excuse?"

No movement once he closed the distance between them.

He remembered the last they'd been so close, and did not fight it. Ryoko, Ryoko & Himself followed, unquestioned, complete and agonizing, and he let all of it embrace him, leave him afloat with not but the vision to see across seas and worlds.

"And if not, can you say it's because you're the better---"

The plea, if not the apology, came crawling across the loss of his stern tone and the rest.

"I'm not going back to prove any of that."

"Tenchi," she groaned through sobs, "You don't understand."

"Aeka-"

The princess leapt more than fell to her knees and Tenchi's feet, holding her hands above her head, a complete plea of royalty speaking for all the worlds she'd populated with the most sacred of her desires.

"Please, Tenchi! You can't---You don't know what she-"

Hysteria drained of its chaos and its empathy will fit between the skin, into reserves of compassion held only for the all, and held well.

"I love her."

---

"You knew."

"As did you."

Glaring over the opening, Seita and Washu exchanged the unspoken desperation to be rid of all that had made them, and or to then be rid of all that made them.

Seita's hands began to lower, his eyes to follow his face, far from a sulking reverence, he looked right into the eye of oblivion as it shrank to a pin. He tensed only slightly as it drove back into himself. Threat and reassurance embraced mechanically.

"It could have taken decades, but I might have returned."

"And you have."

He turned and improved his posture with a few gazes up into Unmatched Science's latest Leviathan. Washu took one step, holding her hand out in the same clockwork movement.

"Shall we then?" Seita looked down and to the side, listening to the highest concentration of what soul remained, listening to it imitate a robot. "Let each other help each other?"

"No." Solemn and vulnerable, he spoke to himself, listened to himself, turning back and into the only other thing he knew.

"Let us help Tenchi."

Skin like real skin, his promise of mortality nothing, but nothing like the threat of unwanted life. Washu let his hand go before either of them began to shake, and walked back toward the desk, into the thought of Ryoko. The first tears given full permission were slowed by the needed reassurance that helping the one meant saving the other.