Notes:

Chapter Title: A Little Pain - Olivia

"I've dreamed of the past once. Just once. A past where my father patted me on the head like he always used to do, and told me that I could do anything I put my mind to. It was a warm sensation, but it lasted only a brief moment. One perfect, imperfect second, like the moment a raindrop hovers at the edge of the leaf in a storm, clinging to the tip before it falls, immortal as it spins towards the earth.

When I reached for his hand, it was gone.

That's the father I choose to remember. I chose to say goodbye to him eight years ago, in the foyer of our home, half-buried under rubble and ash.

And then, I had to say goodbye again, at the doors of the state prison. He waved sheepishly at me as they led him through the impenetrable doors behind him. I looked away, wondering why it was so damn hard. That's the funny thing—it gets harder. Every. Single. Time." —Nishikino Maki

The sound of a phone—her phone—ringing startled Maki awake. Eyes still firmly shut, she pushed back unruly red hair from her forehead, hand groping in the darkness around her pillows until her fingers finally found its metal casing. Blearily, she opened her eyes, wincing at the bright display. The time read 0113.

She placed the device to her ear."Nishikino speaking."

"Dr. Nishikino?" She recognized the voice—it was one of the residents at the university hospital. "We have an emergency. There's been a massive riot downtown, and they're bringing in a bunch of injured people. We need you to come in."

She stifled an inward groan as she sat up. Of all the days… "I'll be there in ten minutes," she mumbled, hanging up as she swung her legs over the side of the bed, still blinking in the darkness. She stared blankly at her closet door for a few moments before standing up, grabbing the white coat that she'd left hanging off the back of a chair and stumbling into the bathroom.

Combing her hair into some semblance of order, Maki stared for a few seconds at the product of staying up far too late in her personal laboratory before coming home to get some sleep. Scoffing at the puffy lids underneath her amethyst eyes, she turned and closed the bathroom light, making her way out into the hallway.

The door to Umi's room was closed, and no light peeked underneath the doorframe. Maki snorted softly as she glanced the other way, taking in the bright moonlight that flooded the other half of the hallway, because Eli's room was empty and she hadn't bothered to pull the blinds before she'd left. There was little doubt in Maki's mind as to where her other friend was tonight and she sincerely hoped that the blonde in question had taken her warning seriously.

Closing the front door and locking it behind her, she descended the stairs from their apartment quickly as she strode purposefully to the hospital, although the humid night air wasn't in helping her attempts to feel more awake. Fortunately for her, though, the university hospital was only a few blocks away on campus and she squeezed her way through the doors of the emergency department between paramedics, firefighters, and a panicking crowd less than ten minutes later.

Washing her hands thoroughly in a sink in the back corner of emerg, she spotted the resident that called her. Striding up to him, she gripped his shoulder, causing him to start before turning around. "What's going on?"

He looked a little shaken to be addressed so directly, but promptly answered her question. "Someone started a riot during the demonstration." A faint scowl creased his forehead as he continued. "You know how it is after hours when the bounty hunters join in on those demonstrations. It got ugly pretty quickly because someone started a car fire that went through three apartment blocks before the district got it under control."

"So…"

"So most of the patients here are from the residential area. The district and the police took most of the bounty hunters and rioters to General, and they're full, so they sent them here," he informed her.

Maki pinched the bridge of her nose. "Right."

Sweeping out into the back hallway behind the rows of curtains that lined the walls, she was immediately hailed by one of the other physicians to take a look at an x-ray, and soon, Maki found herself buried in the line of work that she had chosen for herself.

She had finished putting in a neat line of stitches on the arm of a young man and told him he could leave, scribbling a prescription for him on her notepad when she decided to grab a drink. Unfortunately, the small university hospital didn't have as many accommodations as the trauma ward in General did, and Maki had to sidle out into the hallway that led into the waiting room for a vending machine.

She had just taken her first sip of water and had been about to turn to go back to the nursing station to talk to one of the nurses about one of her patients when someone seized her sleeve from behind. Whipping around instantly, she found herself staring into the angry red gaze of a short, black-haired woman, obviously a civilian from the way she was dressed.

Irritation instantly flared under her skin. Does she have no idea what triage means? Not only did the twin-tailed woman have no sense of etiquette, she had actually had the nerve to grab her sleeve without letting go. Who the hell does she think she is?

"Hey you." The other woman's voice was full of self-righteous indignation. "You're a doctor, aren't you?"

Maki glared at her, already disliking her on principle as she wrenched her sleeve out of her grip. "So what if I am?"

"So you're supposed to help people, right? Well then, you can help my brother!" She pointed to a small figure curled beneath a blanket a few feet away, surrounded by two young teenage girls, each one holding one of his hands.

Maki shifted her gaze from the short woman standing in front of her to the boy, huddled on a chair. He looked pale, and briefly, she wondered who had admitted him, because he didn't look well to her. On the other hand…

"Look, it's not like I'm here to just let you jump the line because you wanted my attention. If you think his condition's changed, go talk to one of the nurses at the triage desk."

The other woman wasn't fazed by her irate tone, however, and she squared her small shoulders in front of her. "You know that that's not going to get him seen any sooner. Can't you see he's gotten worse? Are you a doctor, or not? I thought you said you were supposed to be helping people?" Anger blazed in her crimson gaze as she glared back.

For a moment, Maki was too outraged to speak.

"W-What?" she finally spluttered, now genuinely angry. "Of course I am," she snapped back. She wasn't about to admit it, but the repeated comments about helping had stung in ways that the short woman in front of her would never understand. Maki felt the fingers of her right hand curl into a fist. My father promised to help people too.

Her sense of duty warred with her indignation for several long moments, as she looked again between the boy slumped in the hospital chair, his sisters clinging desperately to his hands, and the twin-tailed woman in front of her.

"Fine," she snarled at last, turning on her heel. She stormed into the nursing station, surprising one of the nurses, who was bent over a datapad charting. "Do we have a spare bed?" she asked, not bothering to hide the exasperated tone in her voice.

The nurse looked up, startled. "Y-Yes, we do, Dr. Nishikino, but there's a patient—"

Maki cut her off. "Give me five minutes, okay?"

Something in her expression must've convinced the nurse, because she closed her mouth and nodded. "Bed 5's free," she told her.

Stalking back out into the patient hallway, Maki beckoned to the black haired woman, who hoisted the boy into her arms. "Stay here and wait, okay?" she was saying the two young teenage girls, her tone noticeably different than when she'd been speaking to her.

Maki didn't have time to dwell on this particular fact though, as she grabbed her own datapad off the desk where she'd left it and opened the curtains to the bed in question, allowing the short woman and her brother to enter first before pulling them closed behind her.

After setting her brother on the bed, the black haired woman retreated to lean against the counter with the sink, crossing her arms, obviously still angry from earlier. Maki ignored her, though her own irritation still prickled against her nerves as she pushed past the woman to put the datapad on the hard surface. She washed her hands again before snapping on a pair of gloves, fingering for the ID band the boy would've received when he'd been brought through the hospital doors.

She narrowed her eyes at the surname: Yazawa. It rung a bell, but for the life of her, she couldn't remember where she'd seen or heard it before. Oh well. It doesn't matter right now, anyways.

She pulled out a penlight, shining it into the boy's dull red eyes. "Hey, can you hear me?" she asked, keeping her voice low but firm.

A mute nod.

"I need you to tell me where it hurts." He pointed somewhere in the region of his abdomen, but unfortunately, that didn't say much for her. Well, at least it's a start. She lifted the top of the hospital gown, exposing the skin underneath the pale blue fabric, noting the uneven way his ribs rose and fell with every breath. Watching the movement carefully for a few more seconds, she moved her left hand to rest her fingers on the other side of his ribs.

"Does this hurt?" she asked. He shook his head, although she could see tears forming in his eyes. She moved her hand closer to where her right hand was positioned, feeling for anything out of place. So far, she felt nothing, but Maki noticed how the boy tensed the closer her hand got to the side she was standing on. When she reached his left ribs, his body torched with excruciating swiftness as he arched his back, causing his older sister to snap.

"You're hurting him!" she accused as she strode forward.

Maki batted her away before the other woman could touch her again. "No, I'm not, she growled, watching the boy's breathing as she rapidly counted his respiratory rate under her breath for the second time. Even compared to just a few minutes before, it was elevated and his work of breathing had increased; by now, she thought she knew what was wrong with him.

Ripping the curtains open, she hailed a nurse. "Who's on call for internal medicine tonight?"

The nurse consulted her datapad. "Takahiro," she replied after a few moments.

She nodded once. "Call him. Tell him to get down to Emerg. Now."

She didn't wait for the nurse's nod of assertion before turning around again, her previous irritation with the black haired woman paling in comparison for her worry for the boy on the bed as she redirected her attention to him again. She could worry about frightened, and pissed off family members later. Digging through the supply cabinet at the back of the small treatment room, she found what she was looking for: an IV kit.

Something in her demeanor must've changed, because the other woman retreated to the previous corner she'd been occupying previously, plopping herself down on the small stool that wasn't technically meant for family members, but Maki let it go as she ripped open the kit. The hospital had an IV team that usually performed the procedure—or she usually called Minami Kotori—but who knew where they were tonight? It would be quicker for her to do it herself, as she assessed the pale skin on the boy's arm, picking a suitable spot after a few moments.

She breathed a small sigh of relief when her first attempt in the chosen vein was successful—inserting an IV was a skill that took years to master, and it was one most physicians left to the nurses, although Maki did not have the luxury of time to wait for one tonight. Thankfully, the specialist she'd called for pulled open the curtains seconds later. "You called, Dr. Nishikino?" the older man asked her, slight skepticism in his tone as he took in the sight of her, the boy, and the black-haired woman.

Maki did not particularly like Takahiro Hiroshi. He had worked for the university hospital since before the first Ceresis attacks, and had been a minor acquaintance of her father's. When she had graduated medical school, he had been one of the first people to voice his dissent over her new position, though he took care never to say it to her face. He wasn't the only one, however, and grudgingly, Maki had let it slide, knowing that nothing she could say would change his opinion of her until she proved it otherwise.

But for his sake more than her own tonight, she fervently hoped that he had the sense to put petty matters behind him.

She led him to where the boy was lying as he took a quick glance at the boy's vitals. "I think he's hemorrhaging internally," she said, ignoring the sharp intake of breath from the short woman behind her.

Takahiro paused for a brief moment or two, raking his eyes over the patient before scanning the boy's vitals once more. "I agree. We need to get him to the OR." There was no short derisiveness in his tone tonight as he pushed past her in a hurry, yelling for a nurse to accompany him.

Maki stood by as they pushed the boy, flanked by Takahiro and several nurses down the hallway, the short woman in tow, being led by another. There was nothing else she could do now, and for a moment, she was struck by how singular and helpless she was as she stood there in the now empty examination room.

Even if I am a doctor, I can't do everything. I can't help everyone.

The she shook her head, dislodging several tangled curls of dark red hair. But I sure as hell am going to try.

It was almost morning when, finally, the emergency department was nearly empty. Most of the patients had been sent home, or otherwise admitted, and Maki allowed herself her third cup of coffee in as many hours as she brushed past the nursing station on her way to see her last patient, an older woman with some minor burns on her arms.

Tiredness occasionally clutched at her eyelids, but the tingling buzz of caffeine still lingered in her veins as she made impersonal small talk with the woman, who was mostly concerned about how much reparation the district was going to pay her for her ruined apartment unit. It took a considerable amount of her self-control to keep her comments to herself as she cleaned the large blisters with saline solution before carefully dressing it, giving the woman explicit instructions on how to care for her dressings and then sent her off on her way to the pharmacy.

She pushed back her hair from her forehead as she went to dump the remains of her coffee into the sink at the back of the emergency department, almost running into Kotori, who had just shown up for her shift, on the way. "Maki-chan, are you okay?" The brunette's voice was full of gentle, characteristic concern as she took in her appearance.

She stifled a yawn. "Tired," she muttered in reply.

"Go home," Kotori told her, giving her a little push towards the large glass doors where morning summer sunshine was streaming through. "I'll tell Umi-chan to make you some food."

Maki felt a faint blush beginning to creep up the sides of her neck as a wave of embarrassment washed over her. Waving a short goodbye to Kotori over her shoulder, she stepped through the emergency department's doors, wincing at the already balmy temperature outside, even though it was barely 0700.

On her way back to her lab, she decided to take a short cut through the parking lot, not wanting to stay out in the early morning summer heat for any longer than necessary. Her thoughts diverged into her research as she walked, and Maki wondered if it was even worth going back to sleep at this point—her latest caffeine kick was still present under her skin and even if by some miracle she did manage to fall asleep in the heat, it would turn into a very sticky, very uncomfortable afternoon for her when she woke up.

She was so absorbed in her thoughts that she didn't notice that she'd run into someone—or that someone had run into her—until she found herself face to face with the short, black-haired woman from the previous night.

She was wearing sunglasses and a face mask over the lower half of her face now, hands laden with plastic bags as they stared at each other for a moment in the parking lot, before Maki made a motion to keep walking. She had just taken a step forward when the black-haired woman spoke.

"Hey. Thanks… for last night," she said in a low, sheepish mutter, almost too quietly for her to hear, though she could still detect a trace of the indignant tone that seemed to constantly be present in the woman's speech in her words. "The doc said you saved my brother's life. If you hadn't noticed when you did…" Her voice trailed off, as Maki felt embarrassment tighten the back of her throat for the second time in less than twenty minutes.

It took her a moment to place the boy's name—Yazawa. "I-It was nothing," she mumbled, hoping her embarrassment wasn't currently showing on her face. It was one thing between her friends or Kotori, for that matter, but a whole another one between strangers, patients, or other physicians.

"I mean it," the other woman insisted, in a louder voice. "You didn't have to pay any attention to me in the hallway."

Maki felt herself beginning to get flustered at the amount of backtracking the black-haired woman was doing, even though she was half a head shorter than her and far less intimidating height-wise. "I-It's not like I did it for you or anything! I was just doing my job!"

"Hmph! I take the time to thank you and I don't even get a 'you're welcome' in return. Remind me not to grace you with my generosity next time." With that, the other woman turned around and flounced off in the direction of the hospital entrance, leaving Maki standing there, flabbergasted.

A car honked at her from behind.

She resisted the dire temptation to curse out loud, a tiny voice in the back of her head reminding her how unprofessional that would look, especially since she was still dressed in her lab coat.

Striding quickly off the pavement and onto the pathway that led to her lab, Maki fumed silently at the events that had just transpired. Next time. What the hell does she even mean, next time? What makes her think that makes her brother one of my patients? Even if he is, how many patients does she think I have? The short woman's abrasive personality was enough to rub anyone the wrong way and Maki sincerely hoped that there would be no next time.

Her bad mood persisted until she entered the dim, shaded building where her underground laboratory was located. The lack of sunshine as she walked down the hallway only served to lift her mood by the tiniest margin as she typed in her password to her laboratory, raising a hand to flick on the lights out of habit before she realized they were already on.

Umi was standing at her coffee maker, and she raised a blue eyebrow as she stormed in; obviously, she'd noticed the scowl that Maki was sure was still plastered to her face. "Kotori told me you got called in overnight. Did you have a bad night?" her friend offered after several minutes of silence.

Maki strode over to her desk and pulled out her chair in an angry motion before sitting down in it with a thump. "A bad patient, more like," she muttered, trying to put the thoughts of the short, irritating woman to the back of her mind as she watched the coffee boil.

Both of them turned around in near unison when the door to the lab opened again, revealing a messy head of blonde hair as Eli let herself in. She looked surprised to see both of them there as she made her way down the short flight of steps, mumbling a greeting as she passed the table. She had her left hand deep in the pocket of the light jacket she was wearing, but from where she was sitting, Maki couldn't make out what was in it.

Maki exchanged a furtive glance with Umi. "What's up with you?" she finally asked, fatigue making her words slightly sharper than she intended them to be.

Eli looked up from underneath blonde bangs, as though the words had startled her, but she didn't retaliate like she normally would've, which concerned Maki more than the somnolent, impassive expression on her face. "Toujou… gave this to me yesterday," she finally answered, digging into her pocket and pulling out a single piece of paper. She held it out—Maki noticed the slight tremble in her slender fingers as she did so.

Umi took a few steps forward to take it from her, and Maki got up from her chair so she could look over her blue-haired friend's shoulder.

The edges of the photograph were already crinkled and worn, clearly having been thumbed many times over, and underneath the fingerprint marks that decorated its glossy surface, Maki could make out distinctive blonde hair with a very familiar hairpin. She looked up sharply the same moment Umi gasped.

"Is that her?" Maki demanded, her earlier frustration with Eli evaporating on the spot. The timer on the coffee maker went off behind them, but no one was paying attention to it anymore.

Eli bit her lip. "I… think so. But I can't be sure." Her fingers tightened into a fist as she continued. "Not until I see her in person."

"Is this where you were last night?" Umi asked quietly, still holding onto the photograph.

Eli nodded, taking a deep breath as she tucked stray strands of blonde hair behind her ears. "Toujou offered to take me to where her investigation team took this photo. But… we didn't see her." Her voice hardened a little out of frustration.

Maki narrowed her eyes at the word 'we', but repressed the urge to comment.

Umi took a few steps forward until she was close enough to put one hand on Eli's shoulder. "We'll go with you next time," she said. Maki gave her a single, brisk nod as Umi spoke the words.

Eli rested both her hands on the surface of the table. "Thank you," she murmured softly, remaining still for a few moments, before moving over to sit down in front of her personal computer, turning it on, breaking the unaddressed emotional tension in the room as she did so.

Umi turned back towards the coffee maker in the corner and she made her way over to it. "Do you want some?" she asked.

Maki accepted the cup and drank the hot liquid cautiously, watching Eli decline the offer out of the corner of her eye. The black, bitter mixture burnt her tongue and managed to chase away the sleepiness that was crowding at the edges of her consciousness again, but its temperature made her feel slightly queasy, especially given the warmth outside.

She stalked over to her fridge and grabbed a handful of ice from the freezer, dropping them into her mug.

Sipping on her new, improved drink, she turned around to find both Eli and Umi staring at her. "What the hell are you doing?" Eli asked her, eying the drink in her hand with disbelief. "That's not even coffee anymore."

Maki shrugged. "Shut up," she mumbled, sitting back down on her chair in front of her laptop. She cast a glance towards the incubators that lined the opposite wall. She had requested a new line of samples last week, but it would be awhile before the cells matured enough for her to continue her research.

She turned on the news idly as she continued to take small sips of her now chilled-coffee from her cup. The news reporter was recounting the events of the riot last night, and briefly, Maki wondered how Toujou intended to deal with the aftermath, especially given the fact that Eli had essentially just told her she hadn't been present in the district building when it had broken out.

The news reporter had just enlarged the recording from a security camera of the nearby shopping mall when cold fingers suddenly gripped her hand. "What?" she snapped, startled out of her musing.

"Rewind that a little," Eli told her, pointing a slender finger at the video feed. The blonde had rolled her chair over from her computer and had been watching the news with her.

Maki scowled, but did what she was told, rewinding the video back by thirty seconds. "What are you looking for?" she asked impatiently, completely bewildered as to what Eli was up to now.

"Just wait," Eli replied, her cerulean gaze now intently focused on the video clip. "Pause it here," she said a few moments later, and Maki smacked the spacebar on her laptop—perhaps a little too hard, because she heard a small sound of disapproval from Umi behind her.

"What are you looking at?" she repeated, before her gaze followed the tip of Eli's finger to a man in the crowd.

She heard Umi hoist herself off the gurney behind them.

He seemed to be arguing with a merc, but Maki knew that wasn't what had caught Eli's attention.

"Isn't that…" Umi's voice trailed off, but she didn't need to complete her sentence, because Maki thought she recognized the man in the image as well. As poor quality as the video image was, she was fairly sure she was looking at Tokyo District's leader of the movement to reject the New Edenra Policy, Samejima Sho, moments before a bullet pierced the side of his head, the act partially camouflaged by falling debris from a burning car behind them.