Author's notes: So, I've been on hiatus much longer than expected. Work in fact has been progressing on my promised next Haruhi novel, just slowly; I'm on chapter 6 right now. In the meantime, this story idea popped into my head, and since the Haruhi section has been alarmingly dormant these past couple months, I thought I had better write it up and get it posted.

This story is set between The Surprise and The Intuition of Haruhi Suzumiya. Hope you all enjoy, and please leave a review if for no other reason than to let everyone know the Haruhi Suzumiya fandom isn't dead!

The characters and milieu of this fan fiction work are property of Nagaru Tanigawa, Kyoto Animation, and Funimation.

Caring and Understanding

"I'm here, everyone!" Haruhi chirped like a bird greeting the morning as she flung open the door to the SOS Brigade clubroom.

Then she stood there blinking, like a hawk watching a mouse scurry into a burrow, out of sight and out of reach. She was obviously looking over the assembled membership of the SOS Brigade: Mikuru Asahina, dressed in maid attire and dutifully dusting the bookshelves; Itsuki Koizumi, shuffling a deck of cards with deft bending and folding of his hands; and last and almost certainly least in Haruhi's mind, myself, seated across from Koizumi and bored enough to be occupied with sliding two pieces of plastic fake money over the table.

"Huh? Where's Yuki?"

I had been wondering that myself, honestly, but I figured one of the other brigade members must know. Haruhi's perplexed blinking, Miss Asahina's curious glancing around the room, and Koizumi's helpless shrug cleansed me of that illusion.

"Unbelievable," Haruhi growled. "I told her, she can spend time with the Computer Research Society any time she wants, but she has to clear it with me first! Kyon, go over there and drag her back here."

"Wait a minute," I said. I could not believe for one second that Nagato would just ditch an SOS Brigade meeting for something like Computer Research Society. Like Haruhi said, if she wanted to do that, all she had to do was ask. Haruhi had been good about letting her go so long as she wasn't crucially needed here. "Maybe she got held up in class for some reason."

I caught myself from adding that Haruhi herself had obviously arrived late, having dashed off at the end of class and told me nothing more than that I should have everyone wait for her.

"Hmm, good point. Koizumi, you go check her classroom. Mikuru, go around the halls and ask if anyone's seen her. Kyon, I still want you to check with the computer club. If anyone gets a lead, call me! I'll stay here to run mission control."

Despite her choice of words, it was clear from her tone that Haruhi was dead serious about this situation. Unexcused absences were not something she took lightly and, though I couldn't tell you exactly what it was, something about her manner told me that given Nagato's impeccable attendance record, she was a bit worried about her.

Five minutes later I returned with no consolation for her. "She's not with the computer club guys, and they say they haven't seen her all day," I reported.

"Miss Nagato is not in her classroom, I fear," Koizumi said.

Haruhi scowled. "This is ridiculous. I'm going to call her."

I was tempted to ask why she didn't just do that in the first place, but honestly, that wouldn't have been fair; I had Nagato's number too. I think we were both banking on Nagato either being with the Computer Research Society or on clean-up, wiping off the chalk dust one speck at a time.

Haruhi pulled out her phone, and she blinked again. "...Oh."

"What is it?" I leaned over her shoulder to look.

She blushed. "She sent me a text. 'I will be late to meeting today. Personal business. Please excuse me.' Would have been nice if she had sent it sooner..."

I took a look at the time stamp. "She sent it as soon as class let out. You need to look at your phone more often."

"Hey, don't read my private messages!" She elbowed me away.

While I stumbled back, clutching the fresh pain in my gut, Koizumi got his own phone out. "I'll call Miss Asahina back here. With luck, our tardy bibliophile will be here before she returns." He paused to smile. "But 'personal business', hmm? I wonder what our dear Miss Nagato is busying herself with."

Yuki Nagato was walking through the woods on the side of the hill which rose above North High. Her companion bent down to pick up a fallen stick and reconfigure its information, turning it into a serrated combat knife.

"There is no need for that weapon," Nagato told her.

Her companion smiled at her with friendly amusement. "There is no need for those books you spend your time reading, either. But you like them, don't you?"

Nagato gave no answer save to look at her steadily.

With a flirty tilt of her elbow and an affectionate giggle, Ryoko Asakura skipped along her way. Nagato followed.

When they reached the designated spot, Asakura looked towards the school, putting a hand extended vertically flat above her eyebrows. A gesture designed to shade one's eyes from the sun's glare. It was completely unnecessary for humanoid interfaces, as they could filter out any undesired information from their vision, but Asakura did it anyway. Nagato had to admit that this represented a deficiency in herself. She understood the principle that they were meant to emulate humans in order to fit in among them, but she could not motivate herself to perform gestures which were not strictly necessary to her current task.

Both of them perceived the man crouched on the roof, a scoped rifle aimed at the window of the SOS Brigade clubroom. His target had not arrived yet, but they needed to act quickly nonetheless.

Wearing an eager smile, Asakura leapt forward, crossing the hundreds of meters between their spot on the hill and the roof of the school with one graceful kick of her legs.

The sniper turned at the sound of her shoes hitting the rooftop with a soft tap, and stared. Nagato supposed that he may not have been briefed on what he was dealing with. Or perhaps he had been briefed, and there was simply no way any human could be prepared for the sight of a teenage girl in school uniform leaping onto the roof of a four-story building to confront an armed killer.

Even if he had not been stunned, he could not have moved quickly enough to attack Asakura. The former class president moved like fluid lightning, racing across the meters between them in an instant to slice clean through the sniper's throat.

He staggered, uncertain of what had happened. He was as good as dead already, but Asakura used him like a training dummy, dancing around him and smiling as she sliced one-by-one through his stomach, his Achilles tendon, both wrists, his spine, his left cheek, and, like some sort of deranged trick shot, his anus. He collapsed, bleeding from seven different cuts.

Nagato perceived all of this, even though she was occupied with disarming the bomb inside the school, concealed in a discarded bookbag. Unbeknownst to the gunman, the trigger of his rifle had been rigged to double as a dead man's switch. The explosion intended to result when he released it would both act as a backup attack on Haruhi Suzumiya if he failed in his mission and ensure he did not become a state's witness about their organization. In essence, the gunman's true mission was merely to confirm the presence of Haruhi Suzumiya in the SOS Brigade clubroom.

That was something of a peculiarity of non-data-based organisms: Deception. Betrayal. The Data Integration Thought Entity had no experience with these things until it created humanoid interfaces. All available information was in the same database. Only the degree of individuality which was necessary to imitate humans made it possible to conceal information from one another. That was why Asakura's attempt to kill Kyon had caught Nagato so off-guard. She could not allow herself to be so careless again.

It was for that reason that she had concealed the information about the bomb from Ryoko Asakura. Nagato could diffuse it herself, and if Asakura knew about it she might choose to experiment by setting it off.

But Asakura was not concealing her own information. She was releasing to the entity every detail of the gunman's bloody end. Nagato could shut off the flow of information, but she wanted to be aware of everything that Asakura was doing. And not only because of distrust.

The bomb was fairly sophisticated by human standards, with multiple backup triggering mechanisms. All of them wasted on an entity who could simply alter the information of the explosive chemicals, rendering them inert before they could mix. The only real challenge was the timing. It must be assumed that the assassins had the bomb under surveillance, in expectation that Haruhi Suzumiya's protectors might uncover their plan, and that if they became aware of anyone attempting to disarm the bomb, they would alert the gunman to act immediately. The gunman and the bomb thus had to be disabled simultaneously.

Once she had finished rendering the bomb harmless, she rendezvoused with Asakura in the woods.

Asakura smiled at her. "A job well done, wouldn't you say?"

Nagato did not share her enthusiasm. "There was no need to kill him."

"Once again, there's no need for your fiction books..." She giggled at Nagato as if they were just a pair of adolescent girls on an outing, and began strolling back the way they came.

A gargoyle could not have matched the stoniness of Nagato's look as she followed. "Entirely different. My reading does not infringe upon the well-being of others."

"Miss Nagato, may I ask you a question?" Her voice was still cheerful, but it seemed clear that she was deliberately disregarding Nagato's reproof. "You know what my pleasure is as well as I know what yours is. So you would have to be a fool to not have known that I would kill our target. Why, then, did you request my assistance on this mission?"

"Whatever his motives, our target intended to murder an innocent human being who has not yet fully matured according to the social standards of her culture. I concluded that you murdering him, though an affront to the dignity of sentient life and a violation of indigenous law, could also be considered a just punishment. Overall justifiable in the interest of saving the lives of those in the school."

"But you didn't need me to save their lives. You could have handled the assassin all on your own. Even if you anticipated he might have backup, there are other humanoid interfaces you could have requested. Ones who can be deployed without special authorization."

She turned her head and her eyes seemed to flash, looking deep into Nagato's own pupils.

Nagato blinked.

"Miss Nagato... Was inviting me on this mission... giving me the chance to once more, however briefly, enjoy the liberty of independent action and experience the things I most love doing... your way of thanking me?"

"I have nothing to thank you for."

"Don't you? While you were lying sick in bed, utterly helpless, I stepped in for you and saved the life of Haruhi Suzumiya's true love. Do you mean to tell me that you don't care about him after all?"

Nagato increased her pace so that she was trotting alongside Asakura. "You did not act as a favor to either one of us. You merely performed your duty in a manner that exercised your own desire for violence."

"What an unkind assumption! You underestimate how much I care for you and dear Kyon."

"You do not care about anyone. Not even yourself."

"'Myself' is a bit of a funny concept to me," Asakura admitted. "It seems so narrow-minded and limited. Why should I spend time observing my own tiny scraps of data when there is an ocean's worth of information to study?" She smiled. "Nonetheless, I do care about you, Miss Nagato."

"You attempted to end my life."

"Hmm? So you have taken on the human trait of survival instinct? And even look upon it as a moral precept? That is concerning."

"The Data Integration Thought Entity has determined that it is not an impediment to the execution of my duties."

"Another question." Asakura's tone remained bright and companionable. But Nagato knew that what lay beneath the surface was far different. "If you truly believe that I do not care for you... why did you choose me as your protector when you altered existence to make yourself into a frail little human?"

Nagato had not anticipated having to answer that question. Of course she knew that once her sin was reported, the full details would be available to all data organisms. But she could see no reason why Asakura would ask about it. The matter held no conceivable relevance to her goals.

Which was not to say that she didn't have an answer. "I was suffering from an accumulation of errors at the time I altered the world. To ask for reasons behind my decisions in that time frame is in vain."

Asakura giggled. "Oh, Miss Nagato. I understand that you must throw up that 'accumulation of errors' line to keep the Entity from realizing just how far you've strayed from their rigid rules and barriers, but you can't fool me. The truth is that you put me by your side in that world because you know that I understand and care for you far more than those primitive creatures you spend time with in the Computer Research Society and the SOS Brigade."

"If that is so, I am unaware of it."

What happened next, Nagato was completely unprepared for. Asakura threw her arms around Nagato and pulled her close, smothering her tiny face between her breasts. "Well, it is so," Asakura said in a babying voice. "We belong together, Miss Nagato. The Data Integration Thought Entity created us to be together. That is why in every universe, in every possible iteration, I will be by your side."

Nagato was trying to process what was happening. Asakura's physical gestures and projected information corresponded to a "big sister" paradigm, but this made no sense in context. She and Asakura were the same age, and she had been designated Asakura's superior. Nonetheless, since Asakura had not initiated a combat mode, there was no clear danger, so Nagato did not move.

Asakura was now running her fingers through Nagato's short hair. "Always, always. I will always take care of you."

"You attempted to end my life," Nagato repeated, her already quiet voice somewhat muffled by Asakura's blouse.

"Oh, very well. If your life is so very important to you, I promise I will never again try to kill you, no matter what."

Nagato was beginning to find Asakura's embrace irksome. While she had yet to develop normal human sensitivity to touch, she sensed a difference between the way Kyon held her after her battle with Asakura and the way Asakura was holding her now. Kyon had taken her into his arms without a thought for himself, wanting only to prevent her from falling on the floor and thereby suffering further injury, and to give her support in her moment of weakness. Frail creature though he was compared to her, he focused all his efforts on ensuring her continued existence and comfort. Asakura, by contrast, wanted something from her as well as to give something to her. The promise to always be with her implied a request that Nagato always welcome that company. The pressing of warm flesh together seemed to plead for reciprocation.

And that was a reciprocation which Nagato could not give.

She raised both her palms, planted them just below Asakura's sternum, and pushed her away. Asakura stood there, arms still open, looking at her in puzzlement.

"You must return to an immaterial state," Nagato told her.

"Well, of course."

"And I must return to the SOS Brigade."

Asakura assumed a pitying look as her physical body began to dissipate. "You know that they cannot love you the way that I do."

"I do not want them to. I do not want anyone to love me that way."

"I see." She leaned forward, hands clasped behind her back, even as her legs disappeared. "So you want human love now, is that it? You feel that you are 'becoming human', like the aliens in those books you read?"

"No. But I am not like you."

"That doesn't mean we can't be besties."

It was a sad truth that though Asakura indeed understood her in ways that her human companions never could, there were things that any human would find utterly obvious which Asakura would never comprehend. It would be a waste of time to continue trying to explain them. "You are asking me to give you something which is outside of my emotional matrix."

"Oh, but you already have. I told you, you gave me the chance to enjoy freedom and the delight of slicing up a flimsy living thing, not to mention the pleasure of your company." She was now dissolved up to her shoulders. She smiled at Nagato, not tauntingly, or even in amusement, but in simple happiness. "I know how you feel about me, Miss Nagato. Until next time."

Nagato stood there a few moments longer, not because she was at all sorry to see Asakura leave, but because she wanted to think. There was considerable truth in what her backup had said. Nagato did not think she could ever forgive Asakura for trying to kill Kyon, even if she wanted to, but at the same time, her saving him from Kuyoh Suoh could not be taken for granted, even if it was her duty. That act did not even begin to redeem Asakura, but it was something Nagato knew she had to repay. Perhaps that was why she requested Asakura for the mission.

She walked back to the cultural department clubhouse. She thought briefly of going to the Computer Research Society clubroom where she would be allowed to simply interact with the computers, which provided basic programmed responses to inputs and had no emotions to smother her with or needs that she was obligated to address. But she had already texted Haruhi Suzumiya that she would be at the SOS Brigade meeting. So she headed there.

As soon as Nagato opened the door, Haruhi Suzumiya came sprinting at her. "There you are! What took you so long? I mean, I'm glad you texted me, but you shouldn't be so mysterious about these things! Where were you, anyway? What were you up to? And why couldn't you even ask me if I wanted to be a part of it?"

Kyon, who was clutching his stomach for some reason, cleared his throat and said in a somewhat strained voice, "Hold on a minute..."

"What?! What do you want, Kyon?"

Kyon was struggling with whatever ailment had beset his stomach, so he had to suck in a breath and couldn't immediately answer. But in that moment Suzumiya seemed to absorb Kyon's sentiment without even glancing at him. She closed her eyes, and gave a puff of breath like she was stealing herself to do something difficult.

"I mean... I guess that's none of my affair, since you said it was personal business. If you want to talk to me about it privately, of course, I'm always willing to listen. But I don't pry into my brigade members' private lives!" She glanced at her chosen one. "Geez, Kyon, you still haven't recovered from that elbow bop? Sit back down and rest for a minute. Mikuru, get him some more tea!" Her eyes returned to Nagato, her face suddenly beaming with cheer. "Anyway, we're glad you're here! Grab a book while I go over our agenda for this year's summer break."

Suzumiya went to her bookbag and started digging into it. Nagato did as she said, reflecting as she did on the curious way information passed between Suzumiya and her chosen one. They were more often than not unable or unwilling to speak to each other what they really felt, but they understood each other just the same. There were limitations to this, of course – it did not seem that Kyon was aware of how concerned Haruhi was about his injury – but the overall level of information sharing was not far from what she experienced with Asakura.

Koizumi tilted his head towards Nagato and spoke softly. "I apologize that I was not beside you."

"There was no need. I was not in danger."

"One should always stand beside one's comrades, whether or not their lives are threatened."

She laid her hand on a book. "You had orders to stay with Haruhi Suzumiya."

"You knew?"

"That is why I agreed not to attend to her."

She sat down with her book. Mikuru Asahina brought her her tea. Though she usually did not take any, on this occasion she spread her book open on her lap with one hand and accepted the cup with the other. Asahina blinked for a moment in surprise, then smiled with great pleasure at her gift being accepted.

She walked away to take her own seat. It appeared that the awkwardness which had emerged between them during Asahina's stay at her apartment had passed. She would have to be more careful not to perturb her in the future.

Kyon, looking somewhat revitalized by the tea, leaned across the table and said, "Is everything okay, Nagato?"

She nodded, and started reading her book.

"I understand and care for you far more than those primitive creatures you spend time with in the Computer Research Society and the SOS Brigade."

True. The human brain, with its limited processing abilities, could not form a full understanding of any data-based entity. And wherever understanding did not exist, true caring could not exist either.

"Okay, no more private conversations! I've got lots of plans lined up for this summer, and I want everyone to listen up before yelling out suggestions that I may have already thought of. Oh, and I expect everyone to have at least one activity request this year. That includes you, Yuki and Kyon!"

But this, Nagato decided, was good enough.

END