I'm nothing special. I know that, and God knows everyone else knows that. I couldn't even beat Haruhi Suzumiya's SOS Brigade at a game that I created. They're the special ones. Koizumi is an esper. Yuki is an alien. Miss Asahina is a time traveler. Haruhi Suzumiya herself is some sort of all-powerful being. I mean, sure, Kyon was a normal human being, but he somehow managed to deal with everything that was happening around him. He held on for years. I wonder how.

I find myself sitting next to a hospital bed where Ryoko Asakura lies dying. She's not even thirty years old, far too young to die like this. I can't do anything about it. Rather, she won't let me. It's indescribable, the feeling of just sitting here and watching. She can't hold on any more, and for some reason I feel like I could be doing something to help.

The doctors can't help, even with all the medical knowledge and technology they have. They have no clue what's happening to her. People with lung cancer don't die the way she's dying. They can treat the symptoms, or they can treat the problem, but it wouldn't do anything. It's beyond their understanding. She's beyond their help.

I've only known Ryoko for a couple of days. Yet already I feel like I've known her forever. Emiri and Yuki have known her their entire lives. I can't imagine what they're going through right now. She was their friend, the one who took care of them, practically their sister. It must be tearing them both up.

Koizumi and his wife seem capable of incredible feats of sympathy and empathy. I get that they both feel terribly sad about Ryoko's situation, but somehow it feels like they're staying as detached as they can, and as much as I want to hate that they're doing that all I can actually think about is how much I hate myself for not coming up with a way for everyone to live happily ever after. Happily ever after is impossible, I realize. I knew that before, but I guess I briefly believed it could actually happen when Emiri and I met.

"Kyon...? Is that you?"

I opened my eyes and looked up to see that Ryoko had woken up. She looks so different in here, her hair let down and the thin blanket pulled up to her chin. Her face was so pale and weak, so innocent and pitiable. She's been so strong and it's hurt her to no end. Her body finally gave up, and it's now that she looks the most beautiful. In the most tragic story this would still be unacceptable.

I shook my head. "No, it's just me. We still don't know where Kyon is, right?"

A tear rolled down her cheek, disappearing into her hair. "I just wish... I could see him one last time. I want to tell him how sorry I am... for everything I did."

Tsuruya is with Kuyou. Koizumi is taking Haruhi and Emiri to the hotel we're staying in because it's some ungodly hour in the morning. Yuki is wandering around downstairs, trying to think of other things to occupy her mind. Ryoko is alone up here except for me.

"You want to tell him you're sorry? For what?"

Her eyes turned to look at me, and I could see tears moments from coming out in a flood. "In... in high school... I attacked him. I tried to kill him. Yuki stopped me, disabling me. She made me disappear after that. I was obsessed for a long time, trying to find a way to kill him. I was malfunctioning. There was something wrong with me and I couldn't understand it. It wasn't until... until after we all became Human... that I figured it out. There were things happening inside me that I didn't understand, and I thought it was something else, but I was wrong..."

I reached over and took her hand, trying to calm her down. She was getting quite frantic, and I can't imagine that it would be too good for her condition. "Slow down and breathe." I want to tell her not to start spouting last words because we're going to save her, but I just can't. Not when there's no way anyone can see. Koizumi and the doctors at this hospital, and even Ryoko agrees that there's no way for her to live. "Tell me what you want him to hear."

She let out a sharp gasp, tears falling down in streams. "Oh God, I loved him! I loved him and I didn't understand it! It screwed me up inside and I tried to kill him, but I loved him! I always... I always loved him."

I gave her hand a light squeeze, letting her know I was still here. "Keep going."

She blinked the tears from her eyes. "Don't tell him that I loved him. Just say that I was sorry for ever trying to hurt him. Sorry for everything I ever did to him. I don't want him to know... and he wouldn't believe it anyway." She stopped for a break, taking long slow breaths. "Do you think..." She trailed off quietly.

I shook her hand in case she was falling asleep. "Think what? Keep talking."

She looked up at me, meeting my eyes. "Do you think... that God is up there somewhere." She raised her other hand, waving off whatever I might have been about to say. "I don't mean just some big cosmic entity. I mean some one being that actually loves people and cares about what happens to them."

I took a deep breath, not entirely sure what to say about that one. "I... I guess it might be possible. I don't think we can ever really know-"

She interrupted me. "Don't give me that 'we can't know for sure' crap! I'm going to know for sure pretty damn soon! Tell me what you think!"

The answer caught in my throat. "I... I don't know what you want me to say."

She looked away, staring up at the ceiling. She was probably trying to look up past it so she could see if there was any God up there looking back down. "I just want to know... if it's worth asking for forgiveness. I want someone to be up there waiting for me, but... part of me is afraid that it's useless. Part of me says that there's no way for me to be saved because... because I'm just some robot thing without a soul. If I wasn't made by God... does He still care about me?"

I'm not the person you need to be asking about this. But... I am the only one here. I have to be the one to say something to her. "Ryoko... if God is up there... then I would say as long as you are capable of being afraid of not being saved, then you aren't just some robot thing. You have a soul just as you have a body. You have regrets. You have fears. You have love. I would say you have a soul."

She showed me a weak smile through her tears. "Thank you... I just want forgiveness. I'm just... so afraid. I..." She laughed, then coughed harshly, only continuing after she had calmed down. "I was always so sure that... if there really was a God... we would have known. The Data Integration Thought Entity would have known, and it would have told us. Maybe... maybe God is not supposed to be something that can be equated. Maybe that's why it's called faith. Maybe you can never really know for sure scientifically, and you just... believe."

I sat back, but didn't let go of her hand. "What about Haruhi? What does that make her and her powers. You thought you could equate them. You called it a data explosion, which is certainly something quantifiable. What is she, then?"

Her eyes searched the ceiling, looking for something. Or perhaps she was just keeping her eyes busy, waiting to see what it would be like when it happened. "I don't know. Special? Gifted? Unique? A miracle? Haruhi Suzumiya is like nothing else in this world. She can cause changes to the universe simply by thinking about it. She is amazing... but she hardly qualifies as a god. She's still... Human."

"Did the Data Integration Thought Entity figure that much out?"

She shook her head softly. "No... I figured that out... after becoming... Human." She started breathing in quick sharp breaths. Then she gasped, her eyes darting around in fright. "Oh God... this is it."

I grabbed leaned over her, grabbing her shoulder and shaking her, trying to keep her lucid. "Don't do that. Stay here just a bit longer. Hang in there, Ryoko."

She barely managed to choke out a few more words. "I'm... afraid... tell Kyon... I'm sorry." She closed her eyes. "God, I'm so sorry..."

I shook her again, grabbing her arms and shaking her. She must have drifted off to sleep or something. I put my hands on either side of her face, moving her head from side to side. I even slapped her once across her face, but she didn't wake up. I ran to the door to get someone to help, but when I looked up and down the halls, there was no one in sight. Most sane people would be home right now. I closed the door and rushed back to Ryoko's side, trying to wake her again.

"Come on, wake up! What about Emiri? What about Yuki? What am I supposed to do now? How am I supposed to get Yuki to quit when you're gone? You're the only one she'd really listen to! You can't just leave like this! You have to give me something! Anything! Please! I need your help to keep Emiri safe!"

She just lay there like she was asleep, effortlessly ignoring what noise I made.

"Koizumi told me a solar flare is coming that's going to destroy everything! You can't just skip out on us! Haruhi is the only one who can stop it, but she needs the SOS Brigade! If the SOS Brigade is together she'll believe in herself and if she believes in herself her powers will come back! Without them, she has no powers, and without her powers we're all cooked! That means Emiri too! Ryoko, you're the only one Yuki listens to! Without you, she'll never go back to that blasted brigade! You have to talk to her! You have to explain that she needs to stay with Haruhi! They have to find the others, but that's never going to happen without Yuki! Wake up!"

I don't know exactly when it hit me, but I do know it should have been sooner. She was gone. I staggered back toward the door, suddenly aware that I was now alone in the room. I practically crashed through the door back into the hallway, frantically trying to remember the way back to Kuyou's room. The only person I was sure I could find alive and awake, or at least capable of being awake, was Tsuruya. I had to find... someone. My God, I had to find someone.

I ran haphazardly through the halls, conscious of the fact that I was the only source of noise other than the quiet buzz of the lights. It felt like an eternity before I finally found some stairs that led to the floor where Kuyou's room was. I ran up the stairs faster than is or at least should be legal, ran down the hall that I knew had Kuyou's room at the end. Every step felt longer than the one before it, until I finally reached out and my hand wrapped around the door handle.

Tsuruya must have heard me coming, because she caught me as soon as I fell through the doorway. She pulled me up, closing the door quietly and leading me to a chair. She sat down across from Kuyou, making sure the woman was still asleep by waving her hand across in front of her face. Once she was satisfied, she fixed me with an inquisitive stare.

"She's gone now, isn't she?"

I nodded, still not able to get out any words. I didn't want to say it. I'll never want to say it. Admitting it feels just... wrong. I can't just say she's gone. I can't...

Tsuruya reached across the bed with a handkerchief, dabbing at my eyes. "As I understand it, you don't have any time to lose. She wants you to keep Emiri safe, and it's up to you now. You have to go talk to Yuki."

The thought had been floating around in my mind for a while now, and it was at this moment that it came out. "Why does it have to be me? Why am I the one who has to deal with all this? Why can't it be someone better than me?"

She calmly patted the top of my head. "Because there is no one better. There isn't anyone else to do it at all. This is your job, and you need to hurry."

She's right. Ryoko asked two things of me, and one of them is time-sensitive. I need to track down Yuki and get her to stop smoking before she kills Emiri too, without telling her that it's why Ryoko died. It would be nice if I had someone to help me with it, but everyone is occupied. Tsuruya can't leave Kuyou alone, and everyone else is back at the hotel. Yuki is somewhere downstairs or outside, and I have to find her and talk to her.

I stood up and left the room quietly, hurrying through the halls of the hospital while making as little noise as possible. I made my way to the waiting area on the ground floor. Yuki wasn't there, so I went out the front door. She wasn't in front of the hospital either. So, like an idiot, I started running around looking for her. This is Paris, but it might as well be a city the size of Europe. It's like trying to find a needle that probably doesn't want to be found in, not a haystack, but a needle stack. Yet, just when it started to occur to me that I wasn't going to find her, I found myself standing next to a railing overlooking the Seine.

I looked right, down the railing, and spotted someone else standing only a few meters away. She was leaning over the railing, propping herself up with her arms and turning something over in her hands. I could tell who it was by the black coat and hat alone, but the streetlights illuminated her lavender hair. She's probably the only person in all of Paris with that color of hair.

Stepping closer to her, trying to get a good look at whatever she was holding, I spoke just loud enough so that I was sure she would hear me. "Yuki."

Her eyes turned to look at me, but the rest of her was still. She looked back to the thing in her hands, answering softly. "Tell me someone was with her."

She knows what happened. "I was there. She asked me to do something."

Yuki nodded. "I know she wanted me to quit. She never liked that I picked up that habit. I tried once or twice, but... I guess I'm just too Human now." She held the item up to look more closely at it, and I could see it was that small pack from before. She glared at it, like everything in the world was the fault of the one thing. "If anything could be done to bring her back, I'd do it in an instant."

"I know you would, but right now there's only the one thing you have to do."

She sighed. "Well, here it goes." She tossed it into the river, watching it splash in and float away. "And there it goes. What am I supposed to do now?"

There's no Koizumi around for me to ask for advice, so I have to make the decision for myself. "Well, for starters, you can save the world." She gave me a look that said I was an idiot. I leaned against the railing, mimicking her position. "Some time in the next month, there's going to be a solar flare. Koizumi says it'll destroy the planet. Haruhi can stop it, but not without her powers. According to Koizumi, she needs to believe in herself, and she won't do that without the SOS Brigade. So she needs you, Koizumi, Miss Asahina, and Kyon."

She scoffed, shaking her head. "So I'm just supposed to go back to those same old games again. Thanks, but no thanks. I'd rather a self-induced coma."

"Haruhi isn't going to use you to fill a role. She just wants to be your friend, so I don't see why you have to be so hostile towards her. I thought you sorted this out. Why isn't this whole thing over already? What is your problem with Haruhi?"

"She's just..." Yuki paused to shake her head, reaching up and taking her hat off. "She's obsessive. I mean, if I had never been an alien, would she have even noticed me? I know she never knew what I was, but it was because of that that she was drawn to me whether she knew or not. Would she ever have even spoken to me if I had always been Human? Would she even care?"

Any proper answer I could give would be counterproductive, so I decided it was better to steer her in a different direction. "Does it really matter? There's no way to change the past, so there's no point dwelling on it."

She let her breath out in a hiss, unhappily aware that I was correct. "But it's not even just her. Kyon said he was our friend too, but when it came down to it he preferred that I stay as the shy little alien girl so he could continue to have fun in a world where the supernatural existed. Koizumi doesn't care either way. He'd rather just sit and watch. It doesn't matter to him what Haruhi actually does."

She stopped there, so I assumed there was something special in store for Mikuru Asahina. I spoke to head off whatever dark secret tales she was about to divulge. "What about Miss Asahina, then? What was so bad about her?"

Yuki just stared into the river for a while before answering. When she spoke again, her tone had become regretful. "She... I just always hated her. She's just... so... Human. She was always everything that I wasn't, and I hated that about her. She never even deserved it, and I just hated her because... she was so perfect."

Well, that certainly clears that up. "Don't you think that's all something you should have put behind you a long time ago. You said it yourself, she never deserved any hate. Why can't you just let go of that? She doesn't even have to ever know what you thought of her back then, if you stop right now."

Yuki looked over to me, and it seemed like she was looking past me. "She already knows, so it wouldn't matter anyway. She knows how much I hated her." She sighed and looked away. "I just hope she knows how meaningless it is."

Meaningless? I hope she's referring to all that hatred not being worth anything. Out of all the SOS Brigade, Mikuru Asahina was probably the one offered the shortest end of the stick. She had little to no luck in everything she did. My heart goes out to her. I wonder where she is right now. Probably on her way here...

"Kyon once asked me what year I came from."

I may have jumped in surprise, but I definitely did not scream. When I turned to my left, there was someone I had certainly not noticed beforehand. I have no idea when she even got there, but suddenly there was a delicate-looking redhead standing against the railing. She smiled at us so sweetly that there was no room for doubt as to who it was. I could see Arakawa and Koizumi sitting in the front of a limo not far away, so that explained how she got here so suddenly.

The woman, whose identity seemed obvious but not enough for me to jump to conclusions, closed her eyes and started again. "Kyon once asked me what year I came from. It was actually more along the lines of how far in the future I was born. At the time, I could only tell him that that was classified information."

Behind me, Yuki placed her hat back on her head. "Mikuru, you don't have to be so cryptic anymore. You've probably been born by now, so you can tell us now."

Mikuru Asahina, I guess that's who it is, took a deep breath. It didn't look like she had expected that sort of response from Yuki. "Okay, well, yes. I mean, I work for the government, but it's the government in about nine hundred years. However, Yuki is correct. I was born much... closer to this year. They do that sometimes, when it's someone no one will miss. This is all information that neither Kyon nor Haruhi Suzumiya can know, by the way."

I just nodded dumbly, with Yuki offering the verbal response. "I thought we were past hiding it from her. And why are we hiding stuff from Kyon suddenly?"

Asahina smiled disarmingly. "It's all classified information. Kyon still isn't cleared for most of it, and Haruhi either can never know or she already does." Yuki gave a nod like she sort of understood, so Asahina continued. "For instance, Haruhi already knows I was born in California. Now, obviously, that's not something that could have happened recently, and it could never happen in the future. So, with America having collapsed five years ago, how could my birth certificate state that I was born there when there are no operational hospitals in what's left of that country?"

I never knew she was born outside of Japan, though it figures that Haruhi would have found out something like that. Yuki looked like she was catching on to something I would have thought the Data Integration Thought Entity should have informed her about a long time ago. How did she not know this yet?

Asahina answered just as Yuki was about to speak. "I was born in the past, and they came back to get me, raise me as one of their own, and train me to be an operative. When I was two years old, my family was sent to an internment camp. I spent three years of my life there, before Fujiwara found me..."

Yuki suddenly stood up straight. "The Second World War? How... how's that even possible? I thought you were sent to investigate Haruhi Suzumiya because the time travelers couldn't reach that far back."

Asahina blinked in surprise, as if Yuki should have already known this. To be fair, she should have, should she? "I was never sent to investigate anything. I was only told to investigate after Miss Suzumiya pulled me into our club. I was originally just there for some field work as part of my training. We still aren't certain why the time disruption occurred, but it's no longer a problem."

I finally snapped out of my stupor, waving my hands. "Wait a second. Wait." Miss Asahina stopped, putting a finger to her lips to indicate that she was going to let me speak. I sorely needed something clarified for me. "You were born... in the nineteen-forties? That's, if I'm not mistaken, eighty years ago."

She nodded. "Fujiwara found me and brought me back with him." She suddenly looked sad. "That wasn't long before he changed. I wish I had gotten to know him better before then. All I can do now is try to win him back."

Yuki spoke from behind me, sounding like she was starting to understand Asahina's position. "He's the time traveler Koizumi's got locked up down there."

The sweet little time traveler nodded, still sad but a little hopeful. "He's like a brother to me. I can't give up on him." She regained her composure quickly. "Ah, but right now I need your help with my daughter."

Author's Note: Mikuru!