Yuki Nagato was not invincible, but she didn't need to be. Any damage done to her body could immediately be undone without her so much as acknowledging it. This made her decision to push Mikuru Asahina out of the way of a screeching car an easy one. But it also meant clearly breaking her leg in front of a crowd of people.

If nobody had seen the injury, it would be trivial to pretend it had never happened, to the point that it would be questionable to even call it "pretending". But the vast majority of the people here weren't supposed to know about her miraculous healing abilities, and they weren't going to find out any time soon. To ensure that, her leg would have to stay broken.

Meanwhile, just a few feet away, Mikuru's perception of time was finally returning to normal, and the pain of being pushed forward and falling over finally registered. She turned her head to see who had pushed her, though she wasn't sure what exactly she'd do with that information, but upon seeing Yuki that decision was made for her: She fainted.

"Yuki!"

Mikuru managed to startle herself as she snapped awake and shouted this, which made it more difficult than usual to sort between dreams and reality as she normally would upon waking up. Before she could even start on that, she had the present to confront first, which had her on a bed in the school infirmary, with Tsuruya on a chair to her left.

"Easy, Mikuru," she said. "She's gonna be okay. And so are you."

"Where is she?" Mikuru said.

"In hospital," Tsuruya said. "The rest of the Brigade's with her too."

Finally, dreams and reality were mostly sorted for Mikuru. She concluded she'd been having a nightmare based on the last real events she'd seen, but unfortunately that left her unsure just how accurate some of the details in the nightmare had been. "...can I see her?"

"That depends," Tsuruya said. "You took a pretty nasty tumble yourself. Can you walk okay?"

Mikuru checked under the covers to find that band-aids had already been applied to parts of her legs where she could still feel a faint sting. She slowly bent her knees until she'd confirmed she could do so comfortably, then got out of bed and took a few steps.

"I think I'm okay," she said. "How far is the hospital?"

Obviously, nothing could have made Yuki regret her decision to save Mikuru. But the opposite seemed just as true to her; nothing could make her more glad she'd done it either. At least that's what she thought, but seeing Mikuru rush up to her bedside still managed to make her more appreciative of the whole situation. And because she knew few, if any, would realize that just by looking at her, she decided to make it as clear as she could.

"I am glad you are okay," she said. "Though I must apologize for the pain and shock I must have caused you."

"I… you…!" Mikuru had a few things she wanted to say, but they didn't seem quite right in any order. "I'm sorry… and thank you… and… and… I think you should worry about yourself too!"

If there had been a right order, that surely wasn't it. Even with a 'thank you' in there, finishing with something so angry and assertive (by her standards, at least) must still have made her look ungrateful.

While rushing over to Mikuru, Yuki's mind had been rushing just as much through every possible variable and outcome to the situation. Hearing Mikuru's concern prompted her to do so one more time, but her answers were still the same.

"The driver was intoxicated and unpredictable," she said. "Your injuries could easily have been much worse than my own."

To her own surprise, some small part of Mikuru actually wanted to keep arguing about this. In some ways, it was a relief that she had nothing to say. Well… almost nothing.

"Well… until you get better… I'd like to do as much as I can to make it up to you."

Over the next week, there were two common observations about Yuki. The first was that she was surprisingly graceful with crutches, and the second was that Mikuru had practically replaced her shadow.

Among the people making these observations, nobody was observing the two quite as closely as Makoto Kamada. If rules were made to be broken, she was made to ensure they got broken. And yet, she was quite happy to adhere to the unwritten rules of how a delinquent should and shouldn't behave, largely because it was the easiest way to convey that she wasn't to be messed with. The only people who didn't fear her were those who didn't know her well enough.

But people hadn't been as afraid of her lately. Not because she'd been losing her edge or anything, but because Yuki, who had always been a little unsettling to more than a few people, had caused a great deal more unease than usual once word got out that she still didn't display any visible emotion even when her leg was broken.

So now Makoto had to put up with an asterisk following her reputation. She was tough, but not "shrug off a broken leg" tough. But she still saw a way of salvaging this. All she had to do was establish she was "make someone that tough finally acknowledge their pain" tough.

"Hey! HEY!"

Both Yuki and Mikuru turned around, the latter with a great deal more reluctance. From the other end of the corridor, Makoto was advancing towards them with a baseball bat in her hand.

"You SOS guys just have to be the center of attention," she said. "As soon as people figure, 'oh, they're just not right in the head, I guess that's not such a big deal,' you have to run into the middle of the road and show us it's more than that, you're a genuine freak. But I'm still not impressed. Even you've got a point where you really start to break…" She let the bat hit her open palm. "...and I'm gonna find it."

Mikuru desperately wished her body would move. If she could just take one step in front of Yuki… well, she wasn't sure what it would accomplish, but she had to do something. The thought of Yuki's leg receiving any further damage was bad enough, but the real risk was Makoto finding out the truth about Yuki. Suspicions were one thing, but once it became crystal clear that Yuki's limits were far beyond any human being's, that knowledge would spread and the consequences would be irreversible.

This thought almost gave Mikuru the willpower to move again, but it was the memory of the promise she'd made in the hospital that brought her the rest of the way.

"Step aside, pipsqueak," Makoto said. "We already know how easy you'd be to break. That's not what I'm here for."

Mikuru shut her eyes tightly, but remained where she was.

"I'm gonna count to three," Makoto said. "After that, one way or the other… no more meatshield. Get the hint?" She held up her index finger. "One…" Her middle finger followed. "Two…"

Mikuru wasn't even sure if she'd hear a three before her shaky legs gave way and she collapsed to the floor. But standing in the way was all she could do, and that thought allowed her feet to stay rooted in place.

At this point, Makoto had stopped counting with her fingers so she could have both hands on the bat. It waited behind her head for just a moment before she finally swung it. "Three!"

"No!"

Such a simple exclamation was unexpected enough for Makoto to drop the bat in mid swing, and the clang of it hitting the floor was the last sound any of them heard for nearly a minute. During the silence, Makoto checked behind her to see if that was where the unfamiliar voice had come from, but she already knew the three of them were still the only ones present. There was only one of them who could have cried out like that.

And that was Yuki.

As Mikuru's eyes finally re-opened, she took a cautious step back to Yuki's side in order to get a good look at her while still keeping an eye on Makoto. She soon realized what a bad idea this was when Makoto reached into her pocket for something, but their concerns were quickly put to rest when her hand came out with just a flip phone.

"Guess I don't have to make a mess after all," she said, taking a picture and showing them the result. Yuki's surprisingly undignified crying face was evidently the latest in a long line of compromising images.

"Once people know I can make you bawl your eyes out without even touchin' you," Makoto said, "they'll remember who stands at the top of the food chain. And look on the bright side: this way, you get to be the center of attention for a little longer!" She broke into uncontrollable laughter, which showed no signs of slowing as she put her phone away, picked up the bat, and walked away.

"Can I get you something to read?"

The Brigade Clubroom was the natural choice for settling down and recovering from what had happened. The others appeared to have gone home a while ago, which suited Yuki and Mikuru just fine. Neither of them were really ready to tell anyone else about the incident.

"No, thank you," Yuki said. She didn't think she'd be able to concentrate in her current state.

Mikuru nodded understandingly and began to prepare some tea. "She… she can't get away with this, can she?"

"She has already faced minimal punishment for past behavior," Yuki said. "While she presented her phone, I noticed thumbnails for photographs of the Student Council President smoking a cigarette. Evidently, she enjoys freedom through blackmail, but this could change if the photographs were to disappear."

Mikuru quickly caught her meaning. Yuki definitely had the technical knowledge to make the files disappear without a trace while keeping a safe distance. "But… what about that photo of you?"

"That is of no concern to me," Yuki said. "It may do some good for other students to know how vulnerable I can really be."

Something about Yuki's choice of words made Mikuru aware of something she'd been taking for granted. "You mean… it really wasn't on purpose?"

"My response was genuine," Yuki said. "It is not something I would have been able to do at will. I saw no way out of the situation, and the desperation was too much, even for me."

One part of that was especially surprising for Mikuru. "No way out? None at all?"

"I was faced with a dilemma," Yuki said. "The only options I saw were to leave you in danger, or risk your anger by endangering myself. Neither outcome was acceptable to me."

Mikuru was learning a great deal more about Yuki than she ever expected to, and with more answers naturally came more questions. "You'd care that much if I got angry?"

"I would," Yuki said. "I have been thinking constantly about the concerns you voiced in the hospital, and in doing so the paradox of selflessness has become apparent to me."

"What do you mean, paradox?" Mikuru said.

Yuki took a sip of her tea. This was going to be a long explanation.

"When two people grow close," Yuki said, "their desires seem to align, but only temporarily. Once they are past that threshold, each one prioritizes the other's desires over their own, no matter how detrimental the result may be to themselves.

"In something as extreme as a life-or-death situation, this can result in the two having opposite desires despite, or perhaps due to, their closeness. Each is willing to give their life for the other, which, while undeniably a selfless decision, still has a selfish result in that one is left alone to mourn the other.

"While in most cases, the consequences are not as extreme as death, I feel the example makes it easiest to convey my point."

Mikuru took some time to process everything she'd heard. "…I think I get it. I never thought of it that way before. I don't think I even noticed us getting that close… but I guess we must have done."

That made Yuki silent again. Despite the incredible progress she'd made this afternoon, she still didn't feel ready to reveal the full extent of her feelings to Mikuru.

But Mikuru didn't need any input from her to wonder about it. Not when she already thought about it so often. Ever since she was first introduced to the Brigade, it had been Yuki's ability to stay calm in hectic situations that made Mikuru so drawn toward her.

Over time, Mikuru would come to recognize the irony in the fact that Yuki having the opposite response in another intense situation was what would bring them even closer together.

Author's note: I don't think self-doubt has been this much of a threat to my writing before. I kept asking myself, "where is this going, what am I trying to say with it, is it as shippy as I want it to be or will it just come across as friend-shippy," and so on. But things like the premise, which was one of those "one day it'll be a part of something but it couldn't be the whole focus of a story… could it?" kind of ideas, pushed me to keep going and see where I ended up.

I'm not even sure how 'finished' this is. If I have enough ideas to continue it, I'll see what I can do, but don't hold your breath.