As Katsuragi rolled Lucy through the corridors, they spent their time in silence. It wasn't exactly companionable, but there wasn't much of an air of tension either. She simply didn't want to talk, and Katsuragi respected her wish.
Lucy stared between her feet at the moving ground as they travelled, her mouth in a small frown as she thought over the situation she was in.
On the positive side, she was going to get to see him again. On the negative, she had no idea how he would react now that he knew her true identity. She didn't really care about how the other two humans saw her, and especially had no problem with Nana's views on her, but she loathed the thought of being hated by Kohta.
Kohta. The first person to accept her for who she was, all those years ago. She'd betrayed him, killed his father and sister and many others, just because he said a little white lie.
She never knew what it was about that lie that had made her snap. Looking back, she had a feeling he had told her that lie to protect her obviously fragile mental state. She'd had no business worrying about whether he'd told her the truth or not.
She let out her one Vector, pushing the hand under one of the wheels of the wheelchair, making it stop dea in its tracks.
"Huh?" Katsuragi asked, stopping in his path and looking at her. "Are you alright, Lucy?"
Lucy closed her eyes, smiling to herself, careful to keep her face covered by the long strands of her hair. Of course he would immediately know it was my Vector and not just a rut on the floor. she thought to herself, before looking back to him, her smile dropping to a frown.
"I...don't want to meet him." she said, staring into the man's eyes. "I've...I'm a terrible person, I don't deserve to see him after the things I've done to him."
Katsuragi just smiled in response, and spoke with a tone of firm authority, though not in any way demanding. "Retract your Vector. I won't allow you to beat yourself up over it. That's all in the past, and I know that Saori-san won't hold you accountable for it. He's a good person, and so are you."
She would have argued, but the stern expression that didn't quite match his feminine face made her think twice about it. It still amazed her how, when she was usually so strong and so unstoppable, she was powerless any time this person was around. It was like she truly wanted to believe that he really did care about her, even though the more logical side of her kept reminding her that he worked for the organization that captured and tortured her kind. She couldn't trust him, and yet she found herself allowing him to carry her like this.
She'd always thought that she was alone, ignoring or just flat-out refusing the company of others, but now that she was in a situation like this, she found it strangely pleasant, to be so totally dependent on someone as she was of the current Director.
She found herself staring at him, almost transfixed with his face. He looked so much like one of her kind, especially now that his hairclip seemed to have come loose, letting his shoulder-length hair almost cover one of his eyes, though he barely seemed to notice the red obscuring his vision.
She realized that she was smiling, a genuine smile, with none of the sadness she usually felt. Just genuine gratitude for Katsuragi's decision to trust her.
She couldn't remember the last time she'd truly smiled, but now she did. She nodded, and her Vector vanished, allowing him to continue pushing her to their destination.
"Katsuragi." she said, and he tilted his head, his hair shifting away from his face as he looked down at her from his position at the handles.
"Yes? What is it?" he asked. "Something wrong?"
She shook her head, the smile still on her face. "No. It's...exactly the opposite. Just...Thank you for bringing them back to me. Thank you for caring enough to do this much for me."
The smile he gave in return was broad, filled with all the seemingly endless happiness that he always carried with him, and it was like his happiness was infectious, filling her as well with its glow. "I care about all of you, Kaede." he said. "And this was the least I could do for you, you've had a lot of pain in your life up until now, so I'll do my best to bring you at least some happiness. Though, I can't let you go with them back home, for obvious reasons."
"I know." she replied. "I know that I'm stuck here again. I haven't quite accepted that yet, but I'm not exactly in a state to argue it right now. Besides, I could tell even from my small corner in the hospital room that you've got far more sway here than Kurama did. You'd probably catch me in a heartbeat if I tried to escape."
Katsuragi laughed. "I wouldn't, but Tatenashi-sensei would send in the infantry, or worse, Luna-chan. Don't ask who she is, you don't really want to know."