Chapter 14: Hogo - Protection
The armor vanished before Godai even hit the ground.
"Godai!" Ichijou yelled, sprinting over to his fallen friend, rifle clutched in one hand--never ever drop your weapon--and dropping to the ground beside him.
"Godai-san!" Hikawa was right behind him as Ichijou set the rifle down and rolled Godai over, half pulling him upright, frantically taking his pulse. Godai couldn't be dead, not now, this couldn't happen--
There was a thin pulse, thready and weak but there, and Ichijou sighed in relief. Godai had just pushed himself too far again...
A white hand hovered above Godai's chest, then drifted south over his stomach. The horn-shaped ring on that hand glowed softly, and Ichijou looked up to see Ra'Baruba'De kneeling in the dirt with him on the other side of Godai, her eyes closed. "Baruba-san?" he asked.
She opened her eyes and looked at him. "He has changed."
Hikawa took off his helmet. "Changed?" he asked.
She looked up at the officer in armor. "He has reached beyond the stone in Kuuga's belt to what truly powers it, and forced it to become part of himself. Now it will never be worn by another. Now it is his." She looked back at Ichijou. "Now he is an Agito."
"He'll be all right, then." That, more than anything, was Ichijou's concern. Who cared if Godai was an Agito--what mattered was that Godai was alive, and himself.
She nodded. "He will sleep the long sleep, and then awaken." Her hand, the ring no longer glowing, drifted to touch Godai's cheek. The cut there was closed like it had never been, and dried blood flaked off the unmarked skin onto her fingertips as she looked at Godai fondly.
"The long sleep?" Ichijou questioned, needing to understand.
"A season, perhaps a bit more," she answered. "It was always such, when the star stones were truly made part of us." She smiled at Ichijou, and he thought he'd never seen her look so approachable... so human. "He will be himself," she assured him. "As human as he ever was."
"He'll be all right?" Ichijou questioned, needing to confirm that.
She nodded again. "Yes. He will be fine. I swear it."
Ichijou sighed in relief.
Hikawa was looking back and forth between the two of them from where he now knelt in the dirt too, the G3-X's helmet tucked under one arm. "Who are you?" he asked Ra'Baruba'De.
Her eyes widened slightly as Ichijou watched. "I am..."
"She's Akagi Baruba," Ichijou said smoothly. "A distant cousin of Godai's. A friend." He smiled slightly at her. "And these days... something of a healer."
Her lips were parted slightly in startlement, but she nodded.
Ichijou supposed this meant he'd forgiven her for what she'd done, protecting her from the police like this. Still, he supposed, she deserved it.
"Onii-chan!" Minori appeared at the gate and scrambled into the wreck of the garden, dropping to her knees beside her brother.
"Yuusuke!"
"Godai-san!"
Oyassan and Nana followed Minori's lead.
"He's all right," Ichijou assured them. "He just needs to sleep for a few months."
They all stared at him. Minori was the first to recover. She smiled and breathed a soft laugh. "Well, if that's all," she said, and touched her fingers to Godai's hair. "That's so like you, Onii-chan." She looked back up at Ichijou. "I'm expecting you to take good care of him, Ichijou-san!"
Ichijou smiled back at her and laughed a bit himself. "Well, I'll do my best," he said, echoing Godai himself not a little.
The MRI revealed that the belt was... gone. Or not so much gone as simply absorbed. Ichijou thought about that as Tsubaki flipped through the pages of printouts. It meant that in the future they wouldn't be able to rely on modern machinery to check up on Godai's condition. They'd have to rely on Godai's own intuition, and Ra'Baruba'De's knowledge.
He glanced at the woman, sitting beside him. She'd cleaned up after the fight, washing clean her hands and face in one of the hospital's restrooms, brushing her hair back into its simple coiffure that somehow managed to look more complex than it actually was. She looked back at him. "'Akagi'?" she asked simply.
"It was the first thing that came to mind," Ichijou replied. "Red for your roses, a tree for nature."
She nodded. "It is acceptable."
"I thought you couldn't use your powers any more," he felt compelled to say.
Her eyes were on the X-Rays. "Some are gone. I may not transform, and no longer can I create plants out of my own being. But to manipulate those which already exist... that, your weaponry could not take from me. As mastery of his elements may now never be taken from Kuuga. Even should he be pierced by the same weapons with which you injured me, warrior."
He didn't apologize. Neither did she ask for it.
"Well." Tsubaki broke the silence between them. "His pulse is roughly one-third of what it should be. His breathing's equally shallow. And you're saying this will last a few months?"
Ra'Baruba'De nodded. "He will require neither food nor drink, merely a guarded place to sleep until he wakes. He will be unable to defend himself until then."
Tsubaki dropped his head into one hand. "You do know that comatose people normally don't have to worry about defending themselves, yes?"
Her gaze was level. "The Beast Lords will hunt down those with the seeds of being Agito within them. He now has more than simply a seed."
"That may be so," Ichijou replied, "but once a group of Beast Lords have been defeated, the subsequent groups haven't sought out the original targets. They shift their aim to others."
Dark eyes widened. "If they are created keyed to specific bloodlines..." It took a moment, then a small smile slowly curved her lips. She looked at Ichijou. "Then the Dark Lord may not have thought his plans through. He may be defeatable."
"Just what are we talking about, here?" Tsubaki asked with a sigh.
"Nothing," Ichijou assured him. "Just the end of the world."
Tsubaki stared at him, then dropped his head back into a hand, fingers massaging circles at his temples. "I swear... he's rubbing off on you, Ichijou. Your twisted sense of humor is coming back."
"I thought you liked my sense of humor," Ichijou jibed.
"I liked your piano playing," Tsubaki returned. "Your sense of humor was always lacking."
The door to Tsubaki's office opened and Sawatari Sakurako stepped inside. "Shuuichi-san," she started, then stopped, seeing Ichijou and Ra'Baruba'De. "Ichijou-san? Baruba-san?"
"Sawatari-san," Ichijou greeted, standing.
She stepped inside the office, closing the door behind herself. "What are you doing here--" she started, then cut herself off. "It's Godai-kun, isn't it?" she asked quietly.
Ichijou reluctantly nodded.
"What's happened this time?"
Tsubaki reached out and shut off the light box. "He's absorbed the belt. According to Baruba-san, he'll be comatose for a few months while his body adapts to it."
"I'm sorry," Ichijou apologized, though he didn't know quite what he was apologizing for. But Sawatari was one of Godai's closest friends, and he felt he owed her an apology for... for not being able to keep Godai out of police business again, at the least.
She huffed out a breath of long-suffering exasperation. "Honestly. Godai-kun keeps doing this!" she declared. She turned to the doctor. "Shuuichi-san, what room is he in?"
"Three-eighteen," the doctor replied. "The usual."
"Right." She turned to go. "I'll be visiting him, let me know when you're ready to go."
Ra'Baruba'De stood, the full skirts of her gray dress falling around her ankles. "I will accompany you."
After the two women left the room, Ichijou turned to Tsubaki. "'Shuuichi-san'?" he inquired mildly.
"Don't you start," the doctor growled at him.
Their apartment ended up feeling too big when there was only one person in it. Ichijou ended up spending most of his free time at the hospital instead, sitting in the uncomfortable chair by Godai's bed while working on paperwork, or reading the newspaper, or even, once or twice, working his way through a book. Godai's slow, soft breathing was reassuring, as was the gradual pace of the pulse monitor. The room wasn't completely private--other patients cycled in and out as the hospital needed the space--so Ichijou usually kept his voice low while keeping up a one-sided conversation as the year wore on to its end. Neither Tsubaki nor Ra'Baruba'De knew if Godai heard anything while in this coma, so Ichijou thought it just as well to keep him apprised of events, in case somewhere deep inside Godai was listening. When he chanced to run into Godai's other frequent visitors--Sawatari, or Minori, or Oyassan or Nana--he found them doing the same.
Maybe, Ichijou thought bemusedly, everyone was just so used to talking with Godai that they couldn't stop even when he couldn't talk back.
He kept Godai apprised of the efforts against the Unknown, and shared station gossip with him. When there were no other patients sharing the room, he even puzzled his way aloud through his non-Unknown cases. Like he'd done sometimes before, while awake, Godai helped him find ways to look at the cases with fresh eyes.
"I know it's all in my head, and you're asleep, but thanks, Godai," Ichijou said quietly, brushing Godai's messy black hair back from his closed eyes one evening. He looked up to see Nana standing there, a dark sweater layered over her shirt and skirt for warmth, looking at him. "Nana-san," he said, standing. "Good evening." He hadn't heard her come in.
She was still looking at him. "Is something wrong?" Ichijou asked.
"Ichijou-san," the young actress started, "by any chance are you and Godai-san...?" She left the end of her sentence ambiguous.
He couldn't lie to her, to Godai's friend and part of his extended family. "Yes," Ichijou said quietly with a slight nod.
She took a step closer toward the foot of Godai's bed. "You and Godai-san are... all love-love?"
"...Yes," Ichijou answered again, with another nod.
She looked down at Godai for a moment and Ichijou waited to see what she'd say. Her fingers drifted across the foot of the bed as though she was in thought. Finally, she looked up again.
She was smiling.
"Well, if it's Ichijou-san, that's all right," she said, and Ichijou breathed a sigh of relief. "But!" She held a warning finger up in front of Ichijou's face. "If you make Godai-san cry, all bets are off!"
With a smile, Ichijou nodded again. "I won't make him cry, I promise."
"Then." She looked at Godai. "And, Godai-san, you're not allowed to make Ichijou-san cry either! Because he's almost as cool as you are." Her only answer was the machine's soft beeps, but that seemed to be enough for Nana because she turned back to Ichijou. "Uncle said that if you were still here I should tell you to go over to the PorePore already and have some dinner."
Ichijou laughed softly. He somehow felt relieved that the self-proclaimed "Number One Member of the Godai Yuusuke Fan Club" wasn't objecting to their relationship. Things could have been awkward if she had. He wasn't Godai, didn't have the right words to defuse that kind of situation. "He sent you to fetch me?"
"Mm-hmm." She nodded vigorously, causing her ponytail to bounce. "If Godai-san's not feeding you, he doesn't trust you to be taking care of yourself, I think." She latched onto Ichijou's arm.
"I've fended for myself for years," Ichijou protested mildly.
"You're turning down the dinner I helped make?" Nana asked pointedly.
Ichijou had a sense of self-preservation. "Of course not. I'm just saying that I've never lived on junk food and takeout, even before Godai and I moved in together."
"Who said you did?" she asked, leading him from the room. "Come on, I'm supposed to collect Tsubaki-sensei too."
"He'll be in his office," Ichijou replied, and turned right out of the room's door, leaving the light on behind them, in case Godai should wake.
In this way, at the hospital, at the PorePore, at police headquarters, and at their apartment, the weeks came and went. Ichijou found himself slowly absorbed more and more into the embrace of Godai's extended family, beginning to feel like they were maybe his as well. Time somehow seemed in suspension, though, days running together like the raindrops of the autumn storms as calendar pages slowly turned. Ichijou wondered if this was what it would feel like when Godai went off adventuring again, as he eventually surely would. Every day passed a little more slowly for not having someone at home at either end of it, and only a phone call away in the middle. Every night he closed his eyes, having looked at where the other futon ought to be laid out, and waited for that person to wake again.
It was not the sound of his alarm that woke Ichijou, but something less definable, a sense that something was off. Blinking muzzily, he rolled to his feet, the cool air of the bedroom washing over him as he rose. He slid the door open silently and padded down the hallway toward the living room. He stopped short, though, at the kitchen door.
Bopping his head in time to unheard music, Godai poured milk into a bowl and, picking up a whisk, began to quietly beat its contents.
"...Godai," Ichijou breathed.
Godai looked up and smiled breathtakingly at him. "Good morning, Ichijou-san. Did you sleep well?" he asked. Wordlessly, feeling slightly stunned, Ichijou nodded. "That's good," Godai replied. "I hope hot cakes sound okay for breakfast? I woke up in the hospital and I was really really hungry, but hospital food never seems very filling, so I came straight home instead."
Ichijou nodded slowly, leaning just a little bit against the door frame. "Tsubaki's never figured out that's why I always try to leave the hospital as soon as possible."
"That's not true," Godai rebutted, grinning. "You're just a bad patient, Ichijou-san. You're impatient."
"And you're not?" Ichijou returned, falling into their patterns like no time had passed. Like it was all normal and the last several months had been a dream...
"Well, maybe," Godai admitted. His smile slowly faded and he stopped stirring the batter for a moment. "Ichijou-san, how long was I in the hospital for?"
Ichijou didn't have to follow his gaze to know Godai was looking at the calendar on the wall beside him, its page turned to December. "Three months," he replied quietly.
Godai nodded slowly. There was something stark in his eyes... dismay at the time he'd lost. "What day is it?" he quietly asked.
"Christmas Day," Ichijou answered.
Godai breathed a soft sigh, then seemed to force himself back into his usual cheer, looking back up at Ichijou. "At least I didn't miss Christmas," he said.
Ichijou nodded.
Godai looked back down at his bowl of batter. "I suppose hot cakes aren't very Christmasy," he mused. He looked back up, grinning. "I'll just have to make something better later today," he promised.
Ichijou laughed softly. "Welcome home, Godai."
"I'm home, Ichijou-san," Godai replied.
Three months. One moment it had been September and he'd been fighting the Beast Lord in Ra'Baruba'De's garden, somehow forcing the Kuuga armor to appear again... and the next, it seemed like, he'd woken up in a hospital bed. That in itself hadn't been so surprising, and he'd found his clothes in a locker by the bed, rail pass and keys tucked into one pocket. It had still been dark and he hadn't wanted to disturb anyone, so he'd just gone home, sneaking in quietly because it had been too early for even Ichijou to wake up. And then, in the kitchen, starting to make breakfast for the two of them, he'd seen the calendar and frozen.
December.
Not September, December.
Then Ichijou had woken up and appeared in the kitchen and confirmed the date, and Yuusuke felt strange, knowing that he'd lost three months. That he'd been lying in that hospital bed worrying everyone for that long... He busied himself making breakfast, and around the time he was flipping the first hot cake onto a plate, Ichijou reappeared, dressed in slacks and a long-sleeved shirt, but no jacket or tie.
"You're not working today?" Yuusuke asked, surprised. He ladled more batter onto the skillet, swirling it into a perfect round.
"I took today off," Ichijou replied.
Yuusuke nodded. "Did you have anything planned?"
Ichijou leaned against the door frame and smiled a little. "I'd thought I'd spend the day with you."
"Even though I was still asleep in the hospital?"
"Yes," Ichijou answered.
Yuusuke smiled softly, warmed, and looked back at his cooking. "Thank you, Ichijou-san."
Ichijou straightened. "I have a present for you."
Yuusuke's eyes widened and he looked back at Ichijou. "But... I don't have anything for you!"
Ichijou smiled, and there was something quiet and happy contained in his gaze. "You're awake," he said simply, as if that was enough. He held out a small green-wrapped box. "Merry Christmas, Godai."
"But," Yuusuke protested weakly, setting down the spatula and accepting the box.
Ichijou hitched up the cuff of his right sleeve slightly, revealing a familiar gleam of silver beneath. "It's my turn to give you something," he said, and Yuusuke had to concede the point with a smile and a soft sigh.
"Can I open it now?" he asked, holding the small box up.
"Please."
He slit the tape open with a fingernail and unfolded it from around the box, setting it temporarily on the counter. Then Yuusuke raised the box's lid to reveal a gleam of gold coming from inside.
It was his Kuuga mark cast in gold, a pendant on a matching chain.
He looked up at his partner, surprised. "Ichijou-san."
"You have it on everything else," Ichijou said. "But I'd never seen it on one of your necklaces, so I had it made. I... hope it's all right?"
"It's perfect," Godai said, and meant it, taking the necklace out of the box, setting the box on the counter, undoing the clasp.
"Let me," Ichijou said, stepping forward, taking the ends of the chain. Yuusuke bowed his head slightly, letting Ichijou's fingers brush through the hair at the back of his neck and reconnect the chain there. Ichijou's body heat felt so warm, so close to his.
"Thank you," Yuusuke said, looking into Ichijou's eyes.
There was something strange in Ichijou's gaze as he withdrew his hands. It was something intense and... needing? "You're welcome," Ichijou said, his right hand pausing, thumb brushing across Yuusuke's cheek, "Godai... Yuusuke."
Yuusuke's breath caught at the touch. They were close... so close. "Ichijou-san..."