'Despair has its own calms.' - Bram Stoker
It took him four months after that to be able to show her any progress on the movement front. He hobbled from one bedpost to another with actual feet movement, as opposed to being wheelchaired and/or carried and/or manhandled to the toilets, the lounge, the recreational centre and onto the little chair and table situated quaintly on the furthest corner of the room from him.
She smiled so brightly and happily that he felt like soaring on cloud nine and screaming in unadulterated delight, provided he could actually verbalise anything of course. He wanted to tell her, really truly tell her that she was the most amazing thing that had ever happened to him.
But how could he?
Every night he placed his hand above his face, staring at it solemnly.
Sometimes tears of self-pity and frustration slid down either side of his face. Most of the time, he just watched the lights reflect on his pale hands, opening and closing his mouth trying to say something, anything, everything.
Not a single syllable.
Rin rarely ever had the night shift but when she did, she sat next to his hospital bed and read textbooks, novels, magazines or just sat there and talked to him.
"The point is," she'd told him once "no one should be lonely. And I can't watch you be lonely Obito. You're too alive to be dead."
No one had ever visited him, not once in the last — how long had it been?
He didn't even remember anymore.
The days melded together, interspersed with her laughter, highlighted by her smiles and gratified by her presence.
No visits. Who would visit him?
"Obito?"
He blinked at her in the afternoon light.
"Time for your physio."
He sat up a little bit straighter, jutted his chin out that little bit stronger and exaggeratedly braced himself for terrible hardship.
She giggled. He grinned.
The shadows retreated once more.