She stood with her back to him, her head tipped back to look out the window. Her hair still fell in glorious golden tresses over her shoulders and past her waist. She was slightly taller than when she first arrived, but she would always be little. Dr. Naboru doubted she weighed any more than when she arrived. She was thin, almost painfully so.
As she turned around her thinness became even more apparent. Her cheek bones jutted out sharply under the pale skin. Her eyes looked enormous, far too large for her face. With only the occasional glimpses of the sun through her window she had gone as pale as the moon itself. He could still see hints of color in her lips and her cheeks, but they were as faded as watercolors.
The beauty of what she might have been broke his heart just a little more.
"Usagi," he said quietly.
There was not even a blink. Her gaze moved from him to the other three people waiting behind him. Her eyes, thankfully still blue, drifted over the group. She offered a tiny smile, though he was not entirely certain at whom.
"Usagi," the doctor tried again, slightly louder.
She began to turn away, back toward the window and the setting sun. He hated to acknowledge the other part of her. Decades of training told him to never play into the patient's delusions. This, however, was not a text book case or patient, and so he called her again.
"Serenity."
Once more, it worked. Immediately he had her attention. This time the little smile was for him. It was cool and distant and undeniably regal. Her chin took on that slight tilt that somehow made her appear more than just a young, sick girl.
It gave her the air of a queen.
"Dr. Naboru," the girl said by way of greeting. "I was beginning to worry."
He raised his eyebrows politely and tried for a smile of his own. "You were? Why?"
"You're usually here five minutes earlier."
It made him pause. Never, before her fits or after, had she given anyone reason to think that she remembered them. Yet somehow she knew that this night was different.
"Why do you think I'm here?" he asked carefully, hoping not to agitate her.
She thought it over carefully for a moment. Finally, she said, "You take me someplace safe."
"Do you know why I take you someplace safe?"
"To keep me safe?" she guessed. He could see the slight hesitation. She was wrestling with the questions, his and her own, struggling to put together things that her mind had held apart for so long. Then she shook her head and looked again to the three behind him. "Should we go?"
Even after three years of battle with her self-imposed amnesia, watching her turn her back on her own memories felt like a blow.
Dr. Naboru did not let this show. He gestured the two orderlies forward. They each took one tiny arm in their hands as gently as they could. Handcuffs or other restraints, they feared, might cause her to lash out before they had her secured.
Also, they knew what she could do to those meager restraints.
The nurse walked at the head of their group. Her eyes swept left and right in search of a door left carelessly open or a patient out of her room. This was not the night that anyone would be breaching the rules.
The orderlies walked just behind the nurse, the girl between them. The girl seemed to accept them as part of her security, much like a girl born into royalty might. To the doctor's trained eyes it was clear that the girl preferred Miss Ten'ou to the male orderly. She seemed to lean on Miss Ten'ou's arm slightly and to murmur to her. Whatever she said made the orderly laugh.
Dr. Naboru went last so that he could observe her. His hopes for any kind of recovery had become slim, but still he searched for the key to her mind. There might yet be a way to wake up Tsukino Usagi, the fourteen-year-old girl who snuck out to meet her friends and her boyfriend in front of the Crown Arcade. That girl had been knocked unconscious by the same force that killed her friends. He had seen fragments of that person hiding in the confusion and barriers. One day, he hoped, he might be able to bring her back.
The transfer passed smoothly. Usagi, or Serenity, stood quietly as they checked to make sure she had not hidden any kind of weapon on her body. It was more of a gesture to standard procedure than a real need. With what she could do to thick padded walls with her bare hands, no weapon was necessary.
As the orderlies prepared to leave the cell, Miss Ten'ou turned to give the patient one last look.
"Will you be alright?"
The patient nodded. "I'll be fine."
"Okay. I'll see you in the morning, your highness."
With that, Miss Ten'ou bowed and left the room. As Dr. Naboru closed the first door he caught sight of the girl standing there in the dark, so small and fragile. The last things he saw, as he latched the locks, were her blue eyes.
It was only after the third door was closed and locked that the doctor turned to Miss Ten'ou with a frown of disapproval.
"I don't want you addressing her as 'your highness'," he told her. "That girl is confused enough in her head. If you acknowledge her delusions they only become more real to her."
The young woman did not appear the least cowed by him. For a moment her eyes blazed up in anger and her mouth opened to fire back a reply. Whatever it was remained unsaid as she snapped her mouth shut with an audible click. She was looking over his shoulder, and he turned.
Dr. Meiou stood behind him. Dark hair was swept back from her face, with part of it pulled into a small bun and the rest allowed to fall down her back. Her face was as serene and cool as ever. She looked at the doctor with mild curiosity as she closed the folder she had clearly just been reading.
"How did the transfer go?" Dr. Meiou asked politely, as easily as she might ask about a minor dental procedure.
"It went well," Dr. Naboru told her. "The patient is…no worse."
This earned nothing but a nod from Dr. Meiou. She was smart, he knew, shockingly smart with fascinating insights. Several times he had wanted to go to her for help with this case. Somehow, though, the young woman intimidated him slightly. Perhaps, in part, it was that he had no idea who she was or how she joined the hospital. Not long after the patient was admitted Dr. Meiou seemed to just appear one day.
"If you don't need her right now, may I borrow Miss Ten'ou?" Dr. Meiou asked, breaking him from his thoughts. "She'll be back before sunrise."
"Of course," Dr. Naboru told her.
With another friendly smile Dr. Meiou continued on her way with Miss Ten'ou following behind. He watched them go and then rubbed his hand over his face. Weariness pressed down hard on him as he prepared for another long night.
"Doctor," the nurse said gently, "we have a cot set up. Let's get you some sleep. The morning will be here soon enough."
He nodded and let her lead him away from the three locked doors and what would soon be raging behind them.
