Tess was absolutely exhausted when they reached the Ohtamacil home and both she and Oro agreed that it would probably be better to just let Erik sleep for the time being. Tess stumbled back to the guest room she was staying in and stripped off her armor, tossing the pieces into the corner. She'd been given her helmet back on the way out of the government building; one of the surviving snipers had retrieved it.

Oro took Erik to his bedroom. The books he'd been reading and papers with architectural sketches and scraps of musical notation were scattered about the room, looking for all it was worth as though he'd left it only yesterday. Oro had not had the heart to move anything even when he'd been certain Erik would never return. Now, the resident of the cluttered bedroom finally returned. Oro pulled the filthy loincloth off of Erik, tossed it into the trash bin, and tucked him into the nest-bed. He pulled the covers up to Erik's chin and turned to leave.

Hesitating at the door, he turned back and sat down cross-legged on the floor. He reached a hand out to trace the arched line of Erik's skull, fingering the tuft of hair behind his ear.

"I never thought I'd see you again, child. This is a miracle beyond my prayers. Praise ever be to the Winds, the Breath of the Divine, for they have returned you to me."

Oro sat at Erik's bedside despite his own fatigue through what little remained of the night. Part of him still did not believe it and he feared to look away, lest his grandson disappear. The sky outside the window began to grow brighter at the horizon as dawn approached. He watched silently as the sun rose through the heavens, bright as ever, despite all that had happened. His relief was becoming tinged with worry. What state would Erik be in when he awoke? Would he recognize Oro? He had not seemed to even see Tess. He only prayed he had the strength to pull Erik from whatever recess of his mind he'd retreated to.

It was approaching midmorning and he stood, cringing slightly at the popping in his joints, and finally left Erik. He walked down the hall to Tess's room and knocked lightly on the door. He received no answer and cracked open the door, waiting for a yell or a boot to come flying at him if she were dressing, but he received neither and stepped into the room.

She was still sleeping. He wasn't especially surprised considering their late night. He knelt down and passed a hand over her forehead gently to wake her. He'd learned his lesson about shaking her by shoulder while she was sleeping the first morning after she began staying with him. He'd receiving a black eye for his mistake and Tess had split her knuckles to the bone on the plate above his eye. Tess blinked and rolled over, waving him away.

This time, he did not hesitate to give her a sharp poke. She opened her eyes and sat up, staring at him crossly.

"What's the damn rush? That sedative'll keep Erik happy for at least another twelve hours, you know."

"I want you to give him the antidote. I want to know... need to know… what his mind is like."

Tess frowned at Oro's admission of his fears. She shared the same, but had managed to shove them aside for the most part. Now she would be forced to face them long before she felt up to the task.

"Sure, I'll go fetch it for you. Do you want to just come out with me? I guess you won't need me around anymore…"

"Nonsense! You may stay. In fact, I insist that you stay for a while at least. I might need your help with Erik. Also, you may consider my home yours from now on. This is your room now, whenever you want it. You have returned my grandson to me twice now; as far as I am concerned you are part of my family. You need not wander any longer, if you do not wish to."

Tess was mildly mortified at the man's entirely too generous offer. She had never quite managed to become comfortable with the man's open and affectionate nature and now she fairly blushed to the gills. She was not especially accustomed to personal attention of any sort. She wasn't sure she'd ever be comfortable spending much time in the Ohtamacil home, but didn't have the heart to simply refuse the offer.

"Um… Thank you, master Ohtamacil…"

"Oro, please. You may dispense with the formalities at this point, I think. The antidote?"

"Oh, of course."

Tess stood up and grabbed the socks from the previous day, slipped on her boots and marched out of the house and down the lawn in her pyjamas. The loose material around her ankles quickly soaked up the morning dew still lingering on the grass. She ducked into the cargo hold of the Stardust, shuffling around through various crates and bags for the antidote. She knew she had a supply of the stuff somewhere, but as she almost never used it, preferring to leave her prey unconscious for the police to deal with, she did not know where she'd stashed it. Twenty minutes of frantic digging later, she finally dug it out, dropped a phial into her pocket and sprinted back to the house.

She found Oro waiting in the front hall and handed the drug off to him with dosage instructions, ducking around him to return to her room to change into dry clothing. She dressed quickly but hesitated at the door. Oro would be administering the antidote now; did she really want to see the results? She paced around her room waiting for some sound to signal Erik's return to the waking world, too chicken to join Oro at the moment.

Oro rummaged around in the small medical kit he kept in his home for emergencies and pulled out a sterile needle. He took the needle and phial into Erik's room, setting them on the floor next to the bed. He kneeled down on the raised edge of the mattress, pulling Erik up to lay against his chest while he filled the needle slowly. He pushed out a bubble of air and excess antidote and pulled Erik's arm toward his chest. He jabbed the syringe into the sinewy flesh of Erik's upper arm coupled with a silent prayer.

Erik opened his eyes slowly a minute later and stared blankly up at the ceiling. Oro put himself in Erik's line of sight, but received no reaction or sign of recognition.

"Erik? Erik, speak to me, please!"

The dull yellow eyes rolled around in Erik's skull like a blind man's as his head tilted slowly from side to side, failing to focus on any one particular object. Oro put his hand on Erik's forehead to still the disturbing motion. He rubbed at the skin stretched over Erik's forehead like shrink-wrap, running his fingers through the tufts of hair, hoping that the gentle contact would somehow coax Erik from his strange fit back to reality. Without his dark Master issuing orders, he did not move, as though he were a puppet with cut strings.

Oro's luck, apparently had run out. No amount of yelling, pleading or shaking produced a response in his grandson. He was beginning to get frantic. He was nearly to the point of giving up and just slapping Erik as a last resort when Tess poked her head through the doorway. He stared at her as though she were a ghost, suddenly frozen at the realization of his own mounting madness. He sighed and let Erik slump back into the bed, sitting back on his heels and inviting Tess in.

"Nothing I do gets through to him. He's nearly catatonic…"

Tess walked over and sat on the other side of Erik and pulled lightly at his hair with one hand while the other scratched at the nape of her neck.

"Long-term trauma will do that sometimes… Dunno what to tell you. Just take care of him, maybe if he isn't hurt anymore, he'll come out of it on his own. Eventually…"

Tess traced the pronounced features of his thin face with her fingertips, feeling more useless than ever. Before she met Erik, it had been a very long time since she'd been faced with an obstacle she couldn't find an immediate solution for. Hunting required wits, intuition and a bit of creative thinking, but the concept was always quite simple: pick a target, chase him down and turn him in. Step A, step B, step C. This problem was much more convoluted and far beyond the realm of her expertise.

"I wish I could do something for him."

"Just be here. That is enough, for now, I think."

Oro stood up and looked at his insensate grandson critically.

"I think I will start, at least, by giving him a bath. He's filthy. Did those monsters even let him bathe?"

Tess sniffed critically and scrunched her nose up a the smell of old sweat and illness that lingered in the air.

"Doesn't seem like it."

Oro bent and scooped Erik up, walking off toward the bath house. He called out to a couple servants on his way to bring towels and extra soap and to go change the bedding in Erik's room. They stared in confusion at the sight of their master carrying what looked like a bit of skin stretched over a tall skeleton, but dashed off to comply when he yelled at them to hurry it up.

He walked into the cloying damp heat of the family bath and propped Erik up in the warm water. He strippied and slid into the large tub beside him and had the servants leave the soaps and cloths next to the tub when they returned.

"I know you think you're too old to have someone else bathe you, but I think we can make an exception for once…"

It took over an hour of scrubbing to release the dirt from his skin and Oro was quite tired by the end of it. Erik's skin was at least two shades lighter and flushed red from the hot water when he was finished, though. He pulled Erik from the water and dried them both with towels. He dressed himself and wrapped Erik in as soft a robe as his servants could find, taking him immediately back to his bed.

Oro blinked tiredly and left Erik to find Tess. He discovered her at the breakfast table finishing her morning meal.

"Tess, would you watch over Erik for a few hours? I need to rest."

"Huh? Yea, sure."

Tess stuffed the rest of the fruit she'd been eating into her pockets and left to go to Erik's room. Oro collapsed into the chair she'd just vacated and buried his face in his hands. He'd been planning to go back to his room but ended up falling asleep for several hours at the table.

Tess walked into Erik's room and crouched beside him, pulling the blankets back far enough to expose his torso and pulling open the front of the robe. The wounds she'd seen on him the first time were finally healed, at least, though thin white scars remained in their place. She traced over them with a finger, able to feel the outline of the ribs under his skin as well as she could see them. She threw the blanket back over him and sat down cross-legged on the floor. She pulled the fruit from her pockets, sitting the soft red peach-like things in a line along the floor beside the bed. She smiled as Erik turned his head slightly toward the bright color.

"Do you want one?"

He didn't answer her, but the fact that he seemed to notice something outside himself was reassuring. Tess picked up one of the fruits and held it in front of his flat nose. He tracked the object with his eyes as she waved it about. She took it back, hiding it in a fold of her shirt and he seemed to search for it with his eyes.

Tess put the fruit down and walked behind Erik. She grabbed him under the armpits and pulled him into a sitting position, albeit a rather slumped-over one.

She moved back to his side and pulled out the short dagger she kept strapped to her leg for emergencies. She cut one of the fruits in half and held the piece out to him. He stared at it and clearly wanted the object but did not reach out for it. Tess frowned. They must have withheld food from him as a punishment. She sighed and cut the fruit into smaller pieces, ignoring the sticky nectar that dripped down her arm and into her lap. She held the bits to his lips, relieved when he pulled them into his mouth without further prompting. She had been afraid that she would have to force-feed him. He was dangerously thin, even by Eranae standards, and most likely malnourished.

Tess slowly cut up each of the fruits she had brought for him and when they were gone she left to retrieve more. She looked back as she reached the door to find Erik truly watching her, albeit passively, for the first time since his kidnapping. She grinned and ran to the kitchens. She rinsed her sticky hands off in the sink and filled a bowl with more fruit and some bread and cheese. As an afterthought, she grabbed a pitcher of juice and shoved a glass into her pocket as well.

She found him standing in the door to the bathroom when she returned. She rolled her eyes at the implication. Well, at least he's still potty-trained. She set the food down on the floor and grabbed his hand, pulling him back to the bed and coaxing him to sit. She began to feed him again, pleased when he started to reach for the food with his hands as she brought it toward him. He still wouldn't take anything from the plate on his own, even when she waved it under his chin, but it was a start, at least.

He seemed to have taken his fill about halfway through the plate. It didn't seem like much to Tess, but she supposed his stomach had probably shrank a bit during his forced fasting. She nibbled at Erik's leftovers while he sat staring passively at his hands.

"You can't hide in the back of your own head forever, Erik. I don't know why you don't just come out. Oro misses you." I miss you too.

Tess didn't know why she was talking to him when he didn't seem to even hear her, but as she sat watching him pick repeatedly at the same part of the blanket covering his legs, she decided the sound of her own voice was preferable to the silence and ended up telling him about the various criminals she'd captured and the worlds she'd visited. She didn't care if he never sang another note, but prayed she'd live to hear his beautiful voice again, if only in speech. She missed the sound of it dearly.