4: ahimsa (devotion to nonviolence)
Ranma was waiting for them at the restaurant, mercifully alone. When Ukyo stalked in, framed by the purpling evening sky and towing a protesting Ryoga by an ear that was probably beet-red and glowing like a uranium rod by now, Ranma got to his feet and hurried to her side.
"Holy crap," he said, "The hell happened to you?"
"This happened," she growled, shoving Ryoga onto a stool. Ukyo knew she looked like something the cat dragged in, ate, and then puked back up--bits of grass were stuck in her hair and her uniform was filthy, her elbows and knees were stained green and her face...her face...
"Ukyo...have you been crying?" the incredulous note in Ranma's voice made her fingers twitch, and she resisted the urge to ball her hand into a fist and pummel...well, Ranma might deserve it for that little comment but she would probably take it out on Ryoga instead. She forced herself to relax.
"Today," she said, swaying only slightly as she smoothed her hair back and tried to regain some semblance of her dignity, "is not being a good day." She turned her glare on Ryoga, who withered on the stool.
"Um...sorry?" he offered, looking for all the world like a kicked puppy.
"What happened?" Ranma demanded, and Ukyo shook her head.
No," she said, "First things first. You, help me," she shoved Ranma from behind, "We're gonna manhandle this idiot back into bed and tie him down if that's what it takes to keep him in place."
"You're gonna tie him to your bed?" Ranma started to grin, but his face froze when Ukyo's glare turned in his direction and suddenly the pigtailed boy was overcome by a coughing fit.
"And you," she went on, turning back to the lost boy, who shivered, "Are going to give me your word of honor as a martial artist not to wander off again, not, in fact, to even leave this building without my express permission, do I make myself absolutely goddamn clear?!" With each word Ukyo took a step closer and Ryoga shrank back against the counter; Ukyo considered that it was a good thing the grill hadn't been on for quite a while now. Well, good for Ryoga, anyway. Ukyo thought the smell of sizzling flesh might help calm her down a bit right about now.
"Yes, Ukyo!" whimpered Ryoga, thoroughly cowed.
"Get him upstairs," she ordered Ranma, "and haul your ass back down here as soon as you do. Hit him if he won't be quiet."
Ranma's eyes were wide as saucers; he hadn't seen Ukyo in such a violent mood for some time. True to the nature of all men when confronted with a sincerely scary woman, he hurried to obey.
"C'mon, man." He hooked an arm under the other boy's shoulder and hoisted him to his feet. Ukyo watched them climb the stairs, Ryoga wobbling slightly as they went.
As soon as they were out of sight, Ukyo collapsed onto a stool and put her face in her hands.
Upstairs, Ranma stood in the doorway and regarded Ryoga. He wasn't interested in manhandling, as Ukyo had said, someone else into a futon who didn't want to go, but Ryoga seemed to have some sense that his immediate and future well-being depended on not angering Ukyo in any way, and had meekly settled on the shitabuton, cheeks flushing red. Ranma noticed that his bandages were askew.
"Ryoga, man, what the hell did you do?" Ranma asked in a low voice.
Ryoga shook his head. "I don't know." His voice was piteous and almost a wail. "I was...walking, and then Ukyo was there, and she yelled my name a couple times, and then all of a sudden she was," he waved his hands, making a gesture reminiscent of a rugby tackle, "She just...plowed into me and then she was pulling my hair and yelling in my face and then...and then she clocked me."
Ranma raised an eyebrow. "That's it?"
"That's...pretty much what happened, yeah."
"So she just went insane and beat you up for no reason?"
"Since when does Ukyo need a reason to scream and yell at me? She was crying, though. Oh, and there was a train."
Ranma frowned. "What do you mean, 'there was a train'?"
"Just that. There was a train; we were near the tracks, it was loud."
"A train," Ranma repeated.
"Yes."
"And Ukyo just beat the holy hell out of you for no reason whatsoever."
"Well, that's kind of what she always does."
Ranma nodded. "Yeah..." he mused, "Yeah, that's...that's pretty true." He paused. "But she was also crying."
Ryoga looked down at his hands. "Yeah. I don't—it was bizarre. This whole thing is just..." he trailed off.
"Ukyo doesn't usually go all girly like that. Hell, I can't remember the last time she got so upset she busted out cryin'. Any idea why?"
Wordlessly, Ryoga shook his head.
Ranma was silent as well. Sitting on the futon mat, legs folded and shoulders slumped, Ryoga looked miserable, and seemed to be trying to make himself as small as possible. His hair hung in his eyes and and his hands were clenched into fists. Like Ukyo his face was scuffed and there was a stick in his hair, which he seemed to not have noticed. Ranma wondered how Ukyo would react to someone so physically dirty sitting in her nice clean futon. Probably not well, but what was Ranma supposed to do? Pour a bucket of water on the guy?
Not really an option, there.
"Ryoga, man, why the hell did you run off like that? What were you tryin' to do, piss Ukyo off as much as you could?"
Ryoga shrugged without looking up.
"Dammit, Ryoga, I've known you for too long—hell, I'm the only person in the whole damn world who's known you as long as me. I mean, I know we ain't exactly friends or nothing but…" he trailed off, then shook his head. "You know what, whatever. It's not like—"
"Ranma," Ryoga said quietly. Ranma paused from turning away from the door. "Ranma, I wasn't trying to do anything. I just don't see what the big deal is, why everyone's so upset about this. And I—I wasn't...I mean I didn't w-want to make Ukyo mad. I mean god, who would want to do that? I just...I just don't know how to get comfortable in one place like this. You know?"
Ranma shook his head. Sure, he'd spent years on the road with his bastard of a father and it wasn't like he had no concept of the appeal of the outdoors, but during all that time what he'd craved the most was the thing he had now—a place to be, a soft futon instead of a bedroll or blanket, a roof instead of the cold vault of the stars.
"You always seem to do okay over at the Tendo's," Ranma said, and watched Ryoga slowly raise his head.
"What do you—at your fiancee's? I've st-stayed there?"
Ranma tried to suppress a smile. With the slight stutter and wide-eyed, stunned expression, Ryoga looked the way he usually did whenever Akane came up--when the fanged idiot wasn't actively trying to murder Ranma in defense of the girl's "honor", or for some other, equally boneheaded reason.
"A lot, yeah."
"But—but—" Ryoga paused, then drew a deep breath. "What exactly is—I mean, how ex-exactly do I know Miss Tendo? How do I--?"
Ranma sucked air through his teeth.
"That's an explanation for another time. And you look like hell. Get some sleep. And brush the sticks outta your hair 'fore you get into Ukyo's futon, all right? Or she'll probably break my damn neck." He paused. "And you'd better not think about takin' off again, or this time I'll come out after ya, and believe me it won't be to give you no love tap like Ukyo did. Get me?"
Ryoga stared at him from under his thick bangs, and from the set of his jaw, a single fang sticking out slightly over his lower lip, it looked for a moment as if his pride was about to get the best of him. Ryoga never did respond well to threats from Ranma, but this time he simply gritted his teeth and growled, "Fine, sure, I'll just stay here for the rest of my entire life, how's that?"
"Suits me fine," Ranma said, and left.
--
Ukyo was sitting at the counter nursing a cup of tea when he came down; she nodded at the stool next to her where another cup waited, a faint wisp of steam rising and fading into the air.
"Well?" she asked when he sat.
"Well, he promised to stay put," Ranma said with a shrug, "but, I mean, there's only so much I can do. The guy don't exactly do whatever I tell him—even without a hole in the head."
"Yeah..." she sat back in the chair, massaging her forehead.
"You gonna tell me what the hell happened, or do I gotta guess?"
Ukyo opened her eyes and fixed them on the ceiling. She was silent for a long moment.
"I don't know what happened," she said finally, brows drawing together, a frown creasing her forehead. "I don't know what the hell he was...was doing or thinking. I found him...he was walking along...along the train tracks."
"He what?"
"Well, it kind of makes sense, though," she said, "For someone like him. Going in a straight line, I mean. Except that only works if you get off the tracks when the train comes."
Ranma sucked a sharp breath through his teeth. Ukyo had brushed the grass and twigs from her hair, but her face was still dirty and tear-streaked. His eyes flicked toward the ceiling, in the direction of the presumably napping Ryoga.
"He didn't tell me about that," Ranma said grimly.
"I know." Ukyo lowered her head and looked directly at him.
"Why would he lie about somethin' I could come down here and find out about from you?"
Ukyo said, "I don't think he was lying."
"Do what now?"
She swallowed. "I tr-tried talking to him on the way back—"
"Talkin'? Or yellin'?" In spite of all the weirdness, Ranma allowed his mouth to quirk into a half-grin. His efforts were rewarded when Ukyo gave a faint, shaky smile.
"Both, I guess," she said. "I—when I found him, the train was—it was going to—" she clenched her fists in her lap and shuddered.
Softly Ranma said, "Ukyo."
"I had to drag him off the tracks!" she exploded. "To physically drag him into somebody's yard! In front of an oncoming train!" Her shoulders were still shaking as she spoke, and Ranma realized with a shock that in fact her entire slender frame was trembling. He shifted uneasily; comforting emotionally distraught women was not exactly his forte.
"Ucchan, why'd you do somethin' so dangerous like that?"
"Because it's a god-damned train, you jackass!" she practically shrieked, eyes wild.
"But Ryoga's pretty tough. Maybe it wouldn't—"
"What? Kill him?" she spat the words. "Ranma, honey, I love ya but don't be a moron. No one—not me, not Shampoo, not you and not even Ryoga—can survive being hit by 500 tons of steel going 150 kilometers an hour. If I hadn't been there, if I'd just been a few s-seconds slower," she was trembling harder now, "If I had stopped to rest for a minute then Ryoga—Ryoga would be just a smear on the tracks and a two-minute blurb on the ten o'clock news. It would have ripped him into pieces. It would've torn him apart."
She squeezed her eyes shut and drew deep, shuddering breaths. Ranma edged a little closer on his stool. There was a question he had to ask, and almost couldn't bear to.
"Ucchan," he said quietly, "Do you think he was—I mean, was he tryin' to..."
"He just didn't understand," she said with a fierce shake of her head, opening her eyes and staring into the distance. "He just didn't—he couldn't f-figure out why I was so mad and I—and I...oh god Ranma I hit him so hard..." she covered her mouth with her hand as tears spilled out onto her cheeks.
Ranma flushed. He should be doing...something...shouldn't he? Crying girls needed comforting, right? Even Ukyo. He tried to think what he would do if it were Akane sitting here, bawling her eyes out.
Say something stupid and get hit with a mallet, prob'ly, he mused. Mallet-therapy seemed to be in some way fundamental to a girl's basic mental health. He decided to try it here; Ukyo could beat on him for a while, then she'd feel better and he'd crawl away and find the first-aid kit.
"It's not like you could hurt Ryoga from smackin' him," he tried, "Hell, if you keep it up he'll probably get the wrong idea or somethin'."
Ukyo turned wide, red-rimmed eyes to him. Ranma winced a little in anticipation. Ukyo's mouth worked and at first no sound emerged.
Then: "You—you bastard!" she flung herself at him and Ranma steeled himself, but instead of the jaw-cracking blow he'd expected, he wound up with an armful of Ukyo as she buried her face against his shirt and wept. Reflexively, brain shooting conflicting signals in fifty different directions—Ukyo girl best friend not-girl friend cute love no! Akane soft friend crying girl ohshitohshitohshit—he put his arms around her shaking frame. Tears soaked through the material of his shirt and contacted his bare skin.
Crying girl...crying girl...oh god whatta I do whatta I do...
"...so scared," Ukyo was whispering, "I was so...so..."
Ranma's eyes narrowed. Damn Ryoga anyway. And damn him for not being around when Ukyo really needed him.
"Ucchan," he said seriously, when she drew back finally and wiped her eyes and face, "Do you want me to beat him up for ya? 'Cause I will."
Ukyo blurted a damp laugh. She sniffled a bit more and Ranma wordlessly drew a tissue from up his sleeve and passed it to her.
"It's just that I really thought—for a moment there, before we were off the tracks, I really felt my life...end, and it was like my whole f-future dropped out from under my..." she blew her nose in a decidedly unfeminine way. "And then...and Ryoga, he—" she sucked a deep breath. "He didn't get it. He kept asking why I was mad and I told him we almost got hit by a train and-and he was all like, 'What? I'm too dumb to know that a stupid train can kill me!'" She waved her hands about, putting on a not-unconvincing imitation of the ultra-macho, hyper-dramatic voice Ryoga used when not dealing with Ukyo or other members of the fairer sex, then slumped.
"He is pretty dumb," Ranma agreed. Ukyo chuckled again, weakly.
"Sorry, Ran-chan," she said, dabbing at her eyes again. "I didn't mean to cry all over you."
"It's all right," he said magnanimously.
"Gawd, I'm such a...such a girl," she said, blowing her nose again.
"Well yeah," Ranma rolled his eyes. Ukyo socked him good-naturedly in the arm.
"Idiot. You know what I mean."
Ranma grinned a bit. But deep in his gut a little black pit was yawning, borne from the hideous thought that he'd almost lost both his best friend and principal rival in one afternoon. If he weren't Saotome Ranma he would really be freaking out at this point. In fact, somewhere in the back of his mind he was, and after he'd had a chance to get home and settle down a bit, he knew he'd be flailing around and spazzing for at least a good fifteen minutes as his brain tried to assimilate the events that had occurred so far.
Right now, though, he cleared his throat.
"So uh, now we take him to doc's clinic, right?" he asked, and raised his eyebrows when Ukyo shook her head.
"Not tonight. Just," he pushed her mussed hair out of her dirty face, "No, there'll be questions—can you imagine how this would look? There's no way, even if I got him cleaned up, with his clothes all stained and, and either his bandages screwed up or I'll have to change them before we go...and then if Dr. Tofu figures out that he was running around outside...and I don't think I can lie about the train, not now," she pressed her long fingers to the side of her head. "God. I could say...what, that he fell really really hard? And that's why he's all beat to hell? Or if I tell the truth, in case Ryoga remembers or, or says something..and then trying to explain he wasn't actually trying to kill himself—at least I don't think he was 'cause I really can't believe Ryoga's that good of an actor—"
"True, true."
"But it's gonna look like he tried to—and then there'll be questions, and what about his parents? What about the law, Ranma? What happens to someone our age if—if he's a danger to—and his parents aren't around and, and how the hell are we gonna explain this, Ran-chan?"
"Uhh," he said intelligently.
"I need time," she was holding her hair back from her face, looking at nothing, eyes unfocused and fever-bright with exhaustion and stress, "I need time to think about this. About what to say. You—" she looked at Ranma, "Stop at the clinic on your way home, tell Dr. Tofu...tell him we found him and we'll bring him tomorrow. Tell him it's too late, or whatever. Tell him something, but just...not tonight." She shook her head. "Not tonight."
"Ucchan," he lightly touched her on the arm and she gave a slight smile, "You want me to...um, I mean wouldn't it be better if I—um..."
"Spit it out, honey," she said with weary indulgence.
"You want me to stay here? Just tonight, keep an eye on the amazing disappearing Hibiki?"
Ukyo pressed her lips together, and Ranma realized she was seriously considering. He tried frantically to think of how he would explain it to Akane if she said 'yes'."
"No," she said finally, shaking her head, "No, I think...it would get you in trouble with Mr. Tendo and the rest, and I can't guarantee that having you...baby-sitting him...wouldn't piss Ryoga off and do more harm than good."
"But—"
"No, I think keeping him here is going to be tough enough without making him think we're keeping him under...armed guard or whatever."
"I'm not armed," Ranma pointed out."
"No, but you know what I mean. Lock and key. Ball and chain..." she paused and shook her head at that last one. "Just...no. And tomorrow I'll get him cleaned up and looking civilized and then we'll both take him over to the clinic."
"Tomorrow," Ranma repeated.
"Promise."
"Okay." He paused, then said, "How did you get saddled with the guy anyway? Isn't it usually the Tendos who have to deal with this kind of crap?"
Ukyo grinned and shrugged. She said, "Stop by tomorrow morning before school, okay? I need...I won't open the restaurant until he's out of here, but it would help to see a different face first thing. Okay?"
"Sure thing, Ucchan." He slapped her on the back and Ukyo got up, walking with him as far as the door.
"You're a better man than I am, Saotome Ranma," she said, and he gave his trademark cocky smirk.
"Naturally."
"Most of the time anyway," she added, and grinned when he yelped a, "Hey!" She put her hands on her hips and crossed the threshold with him, then watched as he trotted off with a wave. She waved back, until he rounded the corner and the silence of evening and of her familiar loneliness plunged down all around her. The sky was dark and she looked up at the stars, cold and bright and distant. Evenings were chilly in the spring.
She shivered and went inside.
--
Ryoga drifted. Somewhere a girl was crying; someplace far away. Down the side of the mountain, maybe, below the clouds, where the world spread out invisible and glittering like ten thousand precious jewels.
He'd fallen a long way to come to this place, this edge of a bright world where the ranges of cold mountains vaulted at the bitter sky, the violence of hard edges dissolving at the point of contact into a piercing, gentle sweetness. The sky surged like the depths of the sea, lit from within by an unknowable, ancient radiance.
He hadn't died, he was sure. It was possible, but in that case why this brilliant warmth, this feeling of lightness that began in a hollow place in his head and spread to suffuse his entire body, detaching his limbs, stilling his heart, silencing the trembling of his breath? If he had died he wouldn't feel the sense of great abandon that washed over him or taste the perfume of flowers rising from some distant valley in a heady offering to the memory of spring.
Someone began to speak from a distance. He couldn't turn his head to see who it was because his body was melting into the snow, and he couldn't make out what the words were. The voice was dry, like slithering, shifting sand. The memory of the desert.
There were other words, down below, far, far away. The resonance of a male voice heard through water, walls, and miles of earth. The musical voice of the girl who'd been crying, drifting on the wind. On the wind, on the wind.
Or perhaps after all it was only the sound of chimes turning and turning in the breeze, and the noise of a great beast, body slithering beneath the earth far, far below.
--
She stood in the doorway of the tatami room and exhaled. She wasn't the sort of person typically given to tears or overwrought emotional demonstrations (unless they were the sort that involved inflicting violence on other people), and the last few hours of vacillating between bladder-wringing terror and stamina-draining tears had sapped the dregs of her strength and left her weary to her bones. She wanted to crawl into the futon that was still hanging on the balcony to dry and surrender to oblivion for at least eight hours, but she had something to take care of before she could even think about bed.
In the room Ryoga lay sprawled half in and half out of the futon, one arm flung out to the side, fingers curled slightly, eyes shut and mouth open, in the universally helpless pose of the truly dead to the world. Ukyo puffed a breath through her lips as she entered the room, and felt a little smile quirk the corner of her mouth.
"Stupid," she muttered, "You hurt my hand, you know."
Ryoga didn't stir at her soft comment, and she approached with the bowl of lukewarm water in one hand and much-used first-aid kit in the other. Settling on the floor in the masculine cross-legged pose forbidden to girls and women, she lifted Ryoga's head carefully and, drawing the soft washcloth from the bowl, gently began to clean his face.
His eyes opened slightly at the contact of the wet cloth, but didn't focus on anything, and Ukyo frowned slightly in concentration as she wiped away as much of the grime and grass stains as she could. There wasn't much she could do about his clothes—she drew a sharp line at undressing him for any purpose, and there was no way in all the seven hells she would consider anything like (she shuddered at the thought) a bath. She was able to pick the rest of the grass and sticks out of his hair, though,
"I'm not a damn nurse, you know," she muttered, giving him a little shake, "You hear me?"
But of course he didn't. She lifted his hands—huge compared to her own long and slender ones—and cleaned them as best she could. Finally she set the bowl aside, drew the first-aid kit closer, and carefully peeled off the misaligned bandages.
It wasn't as bad as she'd feared; somehow the idea had fixed itself in her head that tackling Ryoga down an incline and smacking the crap out of him would in some way cause him harm, but that conceit seemed pretty ridiculous to her now. Sure, he was unconscious, but his steady breathing and good color reassured her. And he was just so fundamentally solid in his presence, here in her room, that she felt like a fool for imagining that her puny blows could do him any real damage; up close, it was hard to think of him as being as merely human as she herself was. He was a lot more like Ranma in that way—anything short of a train or another martial artist going all-out would probably do little more than slow him down for a moment. And the injury looked fine, as much as she was able to judge such things. There was a little rust-colored residue on the soft pad the doctor had fixed over the immediate site, but it was old and the area itself looked far better than it had when Ukyo had cleaned and bandaged it the first time, after dragging him back to her restaurant.
When she'd satisfied herself that she'd done all she was able without putting herself in a truly impossible situation vis-à-vis Ryoga's clothes, she did her best to arrange him more or less on the futon mattress, and covered him with only a slight shudder at the thought of what this was doing to her nice, formerly clean sheets.
"The minute you're out of here, I'm having early washing day," she said to his still form, getting to her feet, bowl in hand and kit under an arm. "And don't you go anywhere. I'll be back to check on you before I head to the storage room."
She made a face at her own comment as she headed downstairs, through the darkened restaurant, and opened the rear door to the night. As much as the idea of being turned out of her own room grated on her nerves, what other option was there? She'd already considered the possibility of sleeping in the same room with Ryoga—hell, she'd slept there with Akane's entire family and Ranma's stupid old man, so in theory at least it wasn't as if she'd never had a man in her room. Actually there'd been several, at the same time.
"Not something to write home to Dad about," she muttered as she dumped the water into the little concrete ditch behind her restaurant, watching the blades of grass she'd plucked from Ryoga's hair turn and flicker in the outdoor lights from the lot behind, before whirling out of sight into the darkness. She propped the bowl outside and stashed the kit under the upstairs sink, then went to fish her pajamas out of the closet in her darkened room, finding her way by the light from the open window.
Behind her, she heard Ryoga stir, and she turned with an armful of fluffy yukata.
"Ukyo?" he murmured, then inhaled sharply and started to sit up, but Ukyo was ready for him.
"Don't you dare, buddy," she said flatly, kneeling and planting a hand on the shoulder nearest her in one fluid motion. "I just got you all arranged, move now and I'll have to start all over."
"I'm not a vase of flowers, you know," he grumbled irritably, but met her eyes briefly before settling back with short exhalation, tension leaving his muscles somewhat.
"I'm sorry I took off like that," he said in a soft voice as Ukyo withdrew her hand, and she blinked. She hadn't expected any sort of apology. "But you didn't have to knock the hell out of me the way you always do, you know," he added.
She felt her battle aura flare at that, and heard it in the crackling that suddenly arose as the tips of her hair writhed with the influx of energy. Biting the inside of her cheek, she forced calm upon herself.
"Look, you," she ground, then drew a deep, deep breath and held it, counting to five, before letting it out. "Ryoga," she said in a much calmer, if slightly shaky voice, "I want you to listen to me very, very carefully, okay?"
"Uh—" his eyes were wide; clearly he'd noticed the sudden flare of her desire to inflict pain, and was trying to surreptitiously inch away from her.
"Listen to me, will you? And stop squirming around! I had a very good reason for being upset. I need—I need for you to understand that, okay?" There was a slight edge to her voice now, almost a cracking of desperation, or hope.
"I don't—"
"I know right now it doesn't make a lot of sense to you. I know that...that it was weird and mean for me to jump on you and yell at you and—and yank you around by your hair."
"Well, yeah..."
"And I know we don't exactly have a long history of camaraderie and getting along and trust, okay? I know all that. But even so..." she took another deep breath and let it out slowly, willing her voice to softness, trying to dull all the edges of her anger and upset and deep, deep weariness, "Ryoga I need you to trust me and to believe me, just this once. Look at me, Ryoga. Look at my face. Believe me when I say that I had a really, really good reason for being upset, and for doing what I did."
He stared up at her, but was silent. Ukyo exhaled a long sigh through stiffened lips.
Finally the lost boy said, "Ukyo..."
"Ryoga, do you believe me? Do you believe that I had a reason to be so angry, that it was a good reason, that I really didn't do it just to hurt you?"
He said, "Sure, sure."
Ukyo scowled. "Damn you! Look at my face! Do you believe me, Ryoga? Do you believe I had a good reason? Do you?"
There was a moment's pause, and Ukyo saw his eyes narrow slightly, eyebrows drawing together. She wondered if she'd finally pushed him too far this evening, and if that famous Hibiki temper, reserved usually and almost exclusively for Ranma and which never, ever flared in the direction of any woman, was finally about to blow up right in her face. She tried to think of what she could do in that case; she didn't think her insurance would cover the damage he could potentially do to her apartment and restaurant. She wasn't going to even think about the damage he could do to her.
He wouldn't hit a girl, right?
Then, to her surprise and not inconsiderable relief, he propped himself up on one elbow and did as she'd requested. His eyes searched her face for a long moment and she felt a slow flush begin to suffuse her cheeks. He didn't need to stare at her quite that much, did he?
Finally, he gave a slow, hesitant nod.
"I believe you," he told her quietly. She exhaled a breath she hadn't even known she'd been holding.
"And will you promise to stay put here tonight, and not climb out through the window or anything and disappear into the middle of Tokyo?"
He closed his eyes and bowed his head.
"I promise," he said.
Ukyo nodded and felt a weary smile quirk the edges of her lips. This was all she could really ask of him at this point. She gently laid a hand on his shoulder again and pushed him, softly, back on to the pillow.
"Get some sleep," she told him. "I'll be in the next room if you...if you need anything."
He'd opened his eyes when his head hit the pillow, and now he nodded hesitantly, a perplexed look on his face.
"Will you tell me tomorrow what got you so upset today?" he asked quietly, and Ukyo, getting to her feet and brushing off her knees, paused before heading to the door.
"Maybe," she said with a smile, nudging him lightly with a foot and earning a look of pure annoyance from him, "If you're nice to me."
Author's note: Apologies in advance as it may take some extra time to get the next chapter out. I'll do my best to get it done in the next 2 weeks or so. Sorry!