FICLET 2: PRAYERS ANSWERED - PART 1
Insomnia, Natsume found, sometimes had its uses. While she was standing at her stove, a cup of freshly made tea in her hands, her abra – who she'd sent to watch over Yuè at night – teleported to her and set a paw on her leg. He was uneasy, and the reason why followed soon after: her charge wasn't sleeping well tonight. That was common enough, but the urgency in Yasu's thoughts made her set down her cup and turn off her stove. She grabbed her coat and teleported to the house she'd settled Yuè in.
In earlier years, the house had been the groundskeeper's cottage. After his retirement, however, he'd moved to the southern islands, leaving the home unoccupied. Rather than hiring on a new groundskeeper, her parents and she had parceled out the man's duties to the students as work- study opportunities. So the cottage had remained empty, being tended to regularly so it wouldn't fall into disrepair.
Wanting to respect Yuè's privacy and his…reclusive…tendencies, she'd settled him into the cottage and had done her best to make him comfortable. But she'd had an ulterior motive for placing him there, rather than in one of the guest dorms. She had little doubt that Yuè was the most powerful psychic she'd ever encountered, which would be fine, if he weren't also unstable. Distancing him from the others – at least at night, when his night terrors and the resulting outbursts occurred – was safer than not. She tried to prompt him to socialize during the day, of course. Admittedly, he wasn't often receptive to doing so – but even so, she felt he was making steady, if slow progress on opening up.
As she unlocked the front door of the cottage, she wondered when – or if – he would ever truly open up to someone. As she closed the door behind her, she sensed, more than heard, the way he thrashed as his nightmare took hold of him. Setting down her coat, she went down the hall and slid open the door to his bedroom.
Yuè lay twisted in his sheets, sweating and gasping, occasionally moaning as if in pain. She went to him, sitting at the edge of his bed and reaching out to touch his shoulder. She began to sing low and soothing sounds, broadcasting a feeling of tranquility to make him quiet and lead him to more peaceful dreams.
It didn't work as well as she might have wished. His fear pushed back against her attempts and he jerked awake. He registered her leaning over him and scrambled back to the edge of the bed. He didn't seem to really see her at first, but then he blinked, his eyes focused, and he stared at her in bewilderment.
"Why are you here?" he rasped, seeming to be having trouble breathing properly.
"You were having a nightmare," she explained, keeping her voice quiet and calm. "I was trying to guide out of it."
His laugh was sharp and bitter at that. "You cannot help me. Not with this."
She didn't let his harsh tone bother her. He was hurting and wasn't precisely rational at the moment. "Try me."
He bared his teeth at her. "How could you help me? You were born into a family who accepted you for what you are. You have probably never lacked for something, never lost something-"
"Everyone has lost something," she said, thinking back on her childhood and – but now wasn't the time or place for that. Now was about him. "What did you lose?"
He evaded her question. "Tell me, what kind of creature do you think I am? After all these months, surely you've made a guess?"
Very well – she would go down this road and see where it led. "You are a powerful psychic who can shapeshift. Your true form is that of a giant cat. According to the legends, that makes you a mew."
His canines – a little too long – glinted in the dark. "Close. Very close. I am a clone of mew, whose genes were spliced and manipulated to…'enhance'…my design. My creators gave me many purposes, none of which were pleasant – and none of which they didn't come to regret."
The scandal on Guren Island suddenly came to her mind, perhaps prompted by Yuè's own thoughts. There had been a private laboratory there, in which illegal cloning and genetic experimentation had been carried out. Extinct species had been resurrected and chimeras had been created. The geneticists had tried to make existing species stronger by rearranging the building blocks of life, scrambling the sequences of adenine, guanine, thymine, and cytosine. They'd been gods, for a time, before their research had gone up in flames. The resulting investigation had led to their work being exposed and their subsequent arrests. Well, to the arrests of those who'd survived the blaze. She wondered if the cause of that fire was now in front of her.
He followed her train of thought and nodded. "You know the group I am referring to."
"I know of them," she corrected. She looked at his forearm, where his serial number was tattooed. "They mistreated you." There was no question as to that.
"They paid their dues for it," he snarled.
"And is that what you were dreaming about?" she asked.
His eyes narrowed. "No." And then he looked away from her. "...And yes. I remembered my childhood. That is all."
"What happened?" She reached out to touch his arm, perhaps too suddenly, because he jerked it back. "Please, Yuè, tell me-"
"You call me by that name," he growled. "As if you own me, as if I am your pet-"
He was getting more incensed – and she was following suit. "That is not true! I didn't want to call you by a number. You are a person. You deserve a name. And you seemed to like the one I gave you, if I remember correct-"
"You still laid your claim with it," he interjected, his eyes flashing blue. "As you did when you gave me shelter and food, the clothes I now wear, the work I now do. I owe you – and someday, I am sure, you will call in that debt!"
"You're wrong." She didn't know if she could reason with him when he was like this, but she had to try. "I wanted to help you. You don't owe me anything for that." And then the thought struck her like a blow to the stomach. "Is that what they told you? That you owed them for-"
The renewed fury in his voice confirmed her suspicions. His words were strangely intoned, as if he were repeating what he'd heard. "They made me, so I owed them. They kept me alive, so I owed them. So I should let them run their tests, let them take their samples, let them shove their needles into my skin. I owed them for what they had done for me. I owed…."
She slid across the bed and took his hands in hers. "No. You owed them nothing. Nothing. They made you, but that made it their job to take care of you, not – not abuse you."
There was a long silence then. He stared at their hands and then shook his head. "But I survived. They said they had to know why. If they did they could bring the others back. Then…," and he swayed, looking like he might be ill, "…but it would not have been them. It could not have been. The soul and the genome are two different things. I knew that…I knew, and yet…."
She was losing him. She tried to get him to meet her eyes, but his gaze kept sliding away from her. "Yuè, what happened? Who are you talking about?"
The pain in his voice made her ache. "My friends. Bulbasaurtwo, Squirtletwo, Charmandertwo, Meowthtwo, Pikatwo. And Aitwo – my Ai. They all died. She died in front of me. She said she thought that life was wonderful, but how can that be true? It wasn't good without them. It wasn't…."
It wasn't good without them. His words struck close to home – almost too close for her to bear. But she pushed back the memories and pulled him towards her, wrapping him in a fierce hug. "No. She was right. It will get better, Yuè. You will get past this, and when you do, life won't seem so terrible. I promise."
His arms wrapped around her and squeezed almost painfully tight. He rested his head on her breast and made sharp, gasping sounds as he struggled to breathe properly. She flushed at the intimate contact, but didn't comment on it. Now wasn't the time or place for that.
"How do you know?" he asked her, shaking in her arms.
"I told you. Everyone has lost something. Even me." But she said no more than that.
He didn't seem to know what to say in response. Instead, he continued trembling against her. A pained noise left his throat, but he didn't cry. Maybe he thought crying was a sign of weakness. Maybe he thought crying was something to do alone. Either way, he held onto her desperately and buried himself in her embrace.
Eventually, when he calmed down, she loosened her grip and he followed suit. She pressed him back down into the bed, then straightened and tucked the covers in around him. He looked exhausted as he stared up at her.
"I'm going to make you some tea," she whispered, "something to soothe your nerves and help you sleep."
She began to get up, but he reached out and grabbed her wrist. "No. I do not need tea." There was a pregnant pause, and then he whispered, "Stay. Stay with me." There was uncertainty in his voice and desperation in his eyes – as if he thought she wouldn't actually come back. As if he thought she'd leave him here, alone and afraid….
She stayed. How could she not? She slid under the covers with him (she'd never shared a bed with a man before – but now wasn't the time to think that either) and kept some space between them.
She whispered, "Of course," and took his hand. He squeezed it back.
He fell asleep before she did – but she slept longer, thanks to already being sleep-deprived. When he woke up, sunlight was pouring through the gap in the curtains and songbirds were twittering outside. As he blinked and cleared away the gumminess in his eyes, he saw that Natsume was still there, sleeping on her side and facing him. His hand was still cradled in both of hers, her skin warm and her fingers light on his. Her hair was falling over her face and she was drooling onto one of his pillows. He repressed a snort at that; she must have been more tired than even she'd realized. He reached out with his other hand, brushing her hair back behind her ear. The black strands were hot from the sunlight and her cheek was soft and smooth. He ran a finger down her chin, relishing the feeling for a moment, just as he relished the feeling of her hands over his.
She stirred then, her eyes drifting open, and he snapped his arm back, feeling like a child who'd been caught stealing a sweet from a candy jar. She blinked at him and then seemed to realize she was drooling, because she jerked up with a gasp and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. She withdrew her hands in the process, which irked him for a reason he couldn't explain to himself.
"Sorry," she said, looking at the pillowcase and seeming to sense – and misinterpret – the source of his irritation. "I'll get you some fresh bedding later."
He shook his head. "I can wash them myself. You needn't worry about it. I think you may be running late as it is."
She glanced at the clock on his nightstand, uttered an oath, and dashed out of his room. Her nightshirt was loose enough to give him a glimpse of a breast, which make his mouth go dry for some reason. He wondered why. Was it because she tended to dress so conservatively, never giving anyone a peak at the skin beneath her clothes? He couldn't be sure.
Dismissing the thought, he leaned over to what had been, for the night, her side of the bed. It was still warm and smelled faintly of jasmine. He breathed that scent in, flipping over the pillow on impulse and deciding that hygiene was overrated. He'd wash the sheets once her smell had faded from them.
He got up when he heard Natsume stumble into something – the coat hanger, most likely – and donned his robe, not bothering to tie it. He found Natsume pulling her shoes on with some difficulty, with her coat tucked under her arm. She stared at him for a moment, her eyes not exactly focused on his face, and he remembered, "Right. Your kind dislikes nakedness." Not that he was truly naked. Sleeping without a shirt on did not constitute that. But he tied his robe together anyway and put on some slippers. "Allow me to make you breakfast. Your preparations will go faster that way."
She hesitated, but then nodded. Taking her by the arm, he teleported them back to her home, which she'd briefly invited him into when they'd gone over the terms of his stay. She immediately hurried up the stairs, and he spent the next few minutes pillaging her cabinets and refrigerator. She was clearly in too much of a hurry to sit down and eat, so it would have to be something simple and easy to carry. He found the bread and the cherry jam, a bag of apples, and a thermal mug – was there time for coffee? Could he even make coffee correctly? Perhaps tea would be better – ah, but the teapot was already out. It was also, he discovered, already full of water. Beside it was a teacup, its contents cold and half-finished. A suspicion dawned on him then. Had Natsume left her tea in the middle of the night to come to him?
The thought was both touching and deeply unsettling to him – because when had anyone ever placed his needs before their pleasures…?
When she came down the stairs, dressed in her shrine maiden uniform – right, it was Sunday, and she volunteered at the Shinto temple on Sundays – she found a plate laden with toast and jam, a container of sliced apples, and a thermos of tea waiting for her. She gave him a smile of thanks, devouring the first piece of toast in urgency. She probably burned her tongue when she washed it down with some gulps of tea – her watering eyes suggested as much – but even so, she looked up at him and asked, "Do you think you'll be alright today?"
Her eyes were shadowed with the memories of the previous night. He nodded to reassure her, finding that despite everything that had happened, he felt rather refreshed – and peaceful. He wondered if he'd ever slept so soundly before…but he wouldn't let the implications of that sink in.
"I will be alright," he said instead. And honesty compelled him to admit, "I slept well, thanks to you."
She flushed a pretty shade of pink at that and put the thermos and the container of apples into her pack. "Okay. Just have Yasu come get me if you need anything. Feel free to have something to eat. I owe you for the breakfast."
He nodded and turned away, intent on arranging his own meal. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her pluck up the second piece of toast and teleport away. The burst of psychic energy made him shiver – but pleasantly so – and he spent the next minute deciding which cold cereal to eat. There was an oats-and-honey blend that would do nicely. As he ate, his eyes kept straying to the teapot on the stove, now hot, and to the teacup on the counter….
He spent the next half an hour cleaning the dishes – it seemed the polite thing to do. Yasu, who was curled up on a nearby mat, eventually stirred and stretched, going over to his bowl of premium pokéchow and munching away at the kibble. The abra, more than once, glanced up at him in what seemed to be amusement.
"Laugh all you want," Yuè eventually growled at him, "But when was the last time she let you sleep with her?"
The psychic fox made a rumbling noise – Yuè recognized it, with some annoyance, as a laugh – and then teleported out into the garden to meditate. Yuè grumbled, but as he finished drying the teacup and found its place in the cabinet, he remembered the feeling of Natsume's hands over his and the scent of her in his sheets….
A small and treacherous part of him wondered, then, if he'd need to have another nightmare to have a repeat of the occasion. The larger part of him, of course, promptly squashed the thought – it wasn't appropriate and it wasn't like he needed her. But even so, that little part of him, persistent and insidious…hoped not.