"A lowering sky at dawn" Part 16
I've stared at this chapter for a long time. I'm tired of doing that. You'd tell me if it sucks, right?
16.
Considering the injuries he'd sustained in the attack, Ryou's recovery goes better than anyone had the right to hope. Which is something Watanuki has to remind them both of occasionally, because as Ryou had predicted in that shared dream, he is not the same as he had been.
His smile, his laughter, his comfortable self-assurance; these are all conspicuously absent, in those first weeks he spends at the shop. When Ryou is awake, he is mainly silent. Remote, to a degree that compels Watanuki to keep a very close eye on him, fearing he might simply decide to slip away into thin air, when no one is looking. And Ryou needs considerable looking after at first, because even the most basic tasks--dressing himself, keeping track of his house slippers, eating meals--are all too much for him to manage on his own.
It isn't his physical coordination that hampers him, so much as his mental focus, which is apt to slip and break at any moment. He's capable of putting clothes on, but then forgets how to fasten them. Watanuki will remind him how to do one shirt button in the morning, and Ryou can do the rest, if nothing distracts him. But then by the next evening, the ability to undo buttons may well have left him. The same goes for eating utensils; his skills with them come and go, much like his listening comprehension, and conversation.
It doesn't take long before Watanuki can sense when Ryou is giving his utmost effort at engaging with his surroundings. For although his gaze remains distant, and his response to anything outside himself is a bare minimum, when he does manage to focus on some task, he looks to be putting all of himself into it, as long as he's able. And once he's exerted himself all he can, the evidence becomes clear in the extent of his withdrawal afterward.
"I appreciate that you put so much energy into breakfast," Watanuki tells him, on the morning of the tenth day. "But can I ask you to wipe your chin? You've got a bit of jam, right here," pointing to his own chin.
Ryou goes on staring in the vicinity of Watanuki's teacup, no change from the past five minutes, though his fingers twitch a fraction on the napkin on his knee.
"You know where your napkin is, you know what I'm talking about," Watanuki observes. "I don't mind helping, but maybe you'd like to try it for yourself?"
As much as possible, he wants to be mindful of Ryou's dignity, and his independence. For although Ryou shows no outward concern for either, Watanuki imagines there must be a great many things currently locked inside the young man's head, which he simply cannot pull together the mechanics to sort out and express just yet. He tries not to take over and do anything for Ryou, without first giving Ryou the choice to do it for himself. Having been an invalid himself a few times before, he knows how important these little allowances can be.
But at least for this particular morning, dealing with his napkin is one chore too many. Ryou chooses to ignore it, in favor of watching a far spot on the rug, with heavy-lidded eyes.
"Call me picky all you want." Watanuki scoots around the side of the table, to sit next to Ryou, and tug his napkin off his knee. "But personally, I don't think friends should let friends go around with jam on their chins." He dabs at the spot on Ryou's chin, and then finding it too sticky, dips the corner of the napkin into a nearby water glass, and has another go.
Ryou sits still and quiet under his ministrations, but the faintest frown crosses his features, when Watanuki is done.
"You want to tell me something?" He isn't expecting a response; Ryou looks very much as if the next item immediately on his agenda is a nap. But then the crease between his brows deepens, and again his hands shift on his knees, as if they want to grasp at something.
"Peach. Jam," he pronounces, with quiet care.
"Hm," considers Watanuki. "That's a good idea. When they come into season, maybe I'll send you out for a bushel, and make preserves. Though I'll warn you, I'm picky about peaches, too."
Ryou ponders this, with a stillness better suited to a tree or a boulder, before yawning widely. Watanuki glances outside, where the chilly morning is going foggy gray and quiet.
"Don't blame you for wanting to sleep," he says. "But I've got some knitting I want to finish. You want help getting to your bed?"
Evidently not, since Ryou only breathes out and tilts over where he sits, aiming in the general direction of Watanuki's lap. Before Watanuki can protest, or fend him off long enough to grab a pillow, his eyes have drifted shut and his head and shoulder are dead weight, pinning Watanuki's leg.
"Fine," Watanuki sighs, trying to shift about, knowing he might as well make himself comfortable. "But just this once."
**
If there is one advantage to living as long as he has, living the last several years in solitude, with disappointments he knows to be irreconcilable, it's that most other trials tend to pale in comparison. Yes, he admits it bruises him, to look across the breakfast table at Ryou's empty gaze. And of course it aches, every time his attempts at conversation are met with a vague halting mumble, or most commonly, silence.
Those are the times he reminds himself where Ryou has come back from, and that his physical injuries are still healing. While Ryou is puzzling slowly over shirt buttons, his brother is learning to get around in a wheelchair, and his sister goes everywhere with a notepad in her pocket, while she and her family learn enough sign language to communicate. By all rights, Ryou should not be anywhere near as capable as he is.
A fortnight passes, becomes three weeks, a month, and any time Watanuki is tempted to feel bereft over what's missing in this young man, he clings to his recollection of that last afternoon; Ryou striding through the front entry, after finally striking the target he'd been struggling toward for years, radiant in his victory, folding his medal into Watanuki's palm.
Such a power as Watanuki had sensed then could not be simply snatched away by a single mishap, no matter how awful. It may have been deferred for a time, sent into temporary hibernation while its host rested and healed. But Watanuki can only choose to believe that having found it and claimed it, Ryou could not lose what was intrinsic to him.
Which is why, on his fifth week of convalescing in the shop, when Ryou appears to suffer a sort of relapse, seeming disinterested in leaving his bed for a day and a half, Watanuki fetches out the gold medal he's been keeping tucked away on his person all this time.
"You remember this?" he asks, kneeling by Ryou's futon, and ducking down into his line of sight. "You're here, but you still haven't taken this back, like you said you would."
For a moment, he sees Ryou's eyes widen and focus on the medal, tracking its slight swinging motion, dangling from the ribbon Watanuki holds. Then abruptly he closes his eyes and rolls over, showing Watanuki his back.
Ah. Avoidance. That's what this is about. Well, it's worlds better than nothing at all. Watanuki can probably work with this.
"Maybe you've decided this is too difficult," he muses aloud. He can tell by the tense set of Ryou's shoulders that he's not actually trying to sleep, and if he's not sleeping he'll be listening. "Maybe you feel it would be easier to just give up. In which case you must think I'm very troublesome, for not allowing you to. So I might as well warn you, I've nagged people far more uncooperative than yourself, for a lot longer."
There comes a soft huff from Ryou, and then he reaches up to yank at his pillow, and stick it firmly over his head, keeping it pinned there with one arm.
"You're making progress, you know," Watanuki mentions, not even bothering to hide his grin. "A few weeks ago, I'm not sure you could've done that."
"Please," says Ryou. "Stop." His voice is muffled, ragged and sad, but that is so much more feeling than he's shown since he woke up. Which is why Watanuki gets up, goes to the other side of the bed and kneels again, laying his hand over Ryou's, atop his pillow.
"No," he answers softly. "I won't stop. And I won't let you stop, either. You have to be stubborn, if you're going to get better. I will drive you crazy if I have to, and I don't care if it makes you angry at me. Giving up is not an option. I won't accept it."
"No point left," Ryou mumbles under his pillow. "Not worth it."
Though his first impulse is to bristle right out into a righteous argument, Watanuki makes himself pause, and consider. Ryou still has enough trouble with words, that he uses them sparingly, most often leaving Watanuki to fill in details and inferences to find what Ryou actually means to communicate.
And the more he thinks it over from Ryou's perspective, the more this mood and his words make sense.
"The way you feel, right now. I've felt that same way before," he says. "When I was your age, and I could hardly go anywhere without spirits attacking me. And later, when I worked for Yuuko-san. There was a day when I woke up, and realized I couldn't remember my parents at all."
Ryou's hand tightens under his, clenching at the pillow, and Watanuki knows he's listening hard. "I couldn't remember where I lived before this place. I didn't know what foods I liked, or what was good. I didn't know anything at all, about my life before I came here."
"You lost....your memory."
At various points over the years, Watanuki had mentioned a few of the basic facts to Ryou, though he had never explained it fully, feeling that somehow, it wasn't appropriate. Though now he sees the time has come, this story is something Ryou definitely needs to hear.
"I gave up my memories of my life, to help some people who were very important. I didn't know this at the time, because I'd even forgotten the wish and the price I'd paid. A lot of the time I was frightened, trying to get along when it felt like most of me was missing. That's when I was falling off into dreams all the time. I couldn't control anything that was happening to me. And the worst part, was how no one else could understand."
Ryou stirs slightly in his bed, shifting his arm just enough to get the pillow off his face. "What'd you do?"
Shizuka must have known, Watanuki thinks. And Haruka as well. That someday, he would need to tell this to someone. If only so that he would remember what it had been like, and that he'd found a way to live through it. Because as lonely, futile, and miserable as his life in the shop has sometimes seemed, he has actually made it through times just as difficult. The current situation was a perfect case in point.
Despite every trial he'd faced, he had eventually overcome. He'd found his footing again, and moved forward stronger than before. And now this is his lesson, to pass on to another in need.
"For awhile, I thought a lot about giving up," he answers honestly. "I didn't feel I was meant to be in the world, the way most people are. I never had a real place in it, not like you do, or anyone else you've known. It seemed to me, that the fact I existed caused a lot more trouble than I was worth." He pauses, smiling sadly, and has to sigh.
"But then several people went to a lot of trouble, to show me that it was important that I stay in the world. I wasn't sure why it mattered to them. But because they cared, eventually I knew I had to make an effort. I had to be persistent, about existing. Even when it hurt, when it seemed impossible. Even when it didn't seem worth it to me."
"What about. When other people hurt you." Now the voice under the pillow is small and miserable, and Watanuki perceives the rest of what brought this spell on. What had happened to Ryou was enough to damage anyone's trust in the human race. He had learned in one of the most shocking, awful ways possible, that the world was not as safe as he'd always made it out.
In all this time, Watanuki has never forgotten Kohane's mother, and what he and Kohane both had suffered from her. Nor has he forgotten people he's met since, who had answered their own fears and frustrations with violence against others. It had taken him quite awhile, but eventually he could appreciate those encounters, once he was able to grasp what they'd taught him.
"At those times," he tells Ryou, curling his fingers around to give his hand a squeeze, "it's especially important to be stubborn. Don't let those people stop you. Don't let them make you less than who you are. There will always be people with enough strength to hurt you, but none of them has any real power to change you. Not if you don't give it to them."
The pillow slides back a bit more, allowing Watanuki a glimpse of Ryou's nose. One downturned corner of his mouth. "They took something. My chance. I was....I wanted to tell you. And they took it."
Watanuki could tell him that while his attackers might have delayed his plans, they didn't actually rob him of all opportunity. He could mention that there would be so many chances in the future, that someday Ryou will look around and see how full of choices his life truly is. But he senses that Ryou doesn't need lectures right now. He doesn't need someone telling him things he can figure out on his own. What he needs, is to know that someone holds faith in him, and knows his obstacles are not bigger than he is.
"Do you remember when we first met? You came to find me at Tango no Sekku. And I knew I was going to meet someone special. Because you sent me something, to let me know."
"You told me. That dream." Ryou sighs. "With the carp picture."
"And you remember what I asked you? If you knew the legend of the carp, who became a dragon?"
"It swam up. A waterfall. And jumped the....Dragon Gate."
"That carp didn't get to become a dragon because it picked an easy task," Watanuki tells him. "It decided to do something that others of its kind would think impossible. And I think we both know you've always had that kind of potential. So don't try to tell me now that you, of all people, would give up on all you could become, just because you've finally met the waterfall." He strokes his thumb across the sharp ridge of Ryou's knuckles, and then pushes up off his knees, stands and quietly departs for the engawa, leaving Ryou to measure his courage against his choices.
**
He's watching the fretful, rain-spattered wind tossing the treetops, throwing tiny sprays of water under the eaves, to speckle the wooden deck. A particularly insistent gust spatters his glasses, and in that moment he feels the distinct need to brew a pot of tea. Orange pekoe, with a sprinkling of anise in the leaves. He doesn't have any frosted tea cakes today, but he does have blueberry coffee cake, and that should serve just as well.
Crossing the threshold on the way back in, he encounters Ryou. Sitting in the rear parlor, watching him through the doorway. Hair mussed from bed and sticking up on one side; yukata held closed with a haphazard, clumsy knot to the obi.
For a moment, they regard each other in silence. Watanuki waiting, privately itching to comb Ryou's hair down, while Ryou struggles for the words he wants.
"If you gave up," he eventually says. "Disappeared. I wouldn't have....got to meet you."
Watanuki tips his chin in acknowledgment, and then pulls off his glasses, to wipe off the water spots. "That's true. And if you were to give up, I would lose an incredibly precious person. Someone who has made me very glad I didn't disappear, back then."
"It's hard." Ryou's shoulders drop, along with his head, as he looks down to his knees. "Everything. I don't." He blows out a harsh breath, curling his arms in around himself, and if Watanuki didn't know better, if he hadn't had this lesson driven home to him so hard, so many times, he would wish there was any way he could stop this anguish, tear away to the edge of the world with it and fling it off, so it could never find Ryou again.
"What do I do?" Ryou pleads. And Watanuki isn't deaf, he isn't heartless, nor is he impervious enough to just wait here and do nothing, while someone he cherishes falls apart before his eyes.
He crosses to Ryou, bending down to offer his hand. "The first thing you do, is stand up. Here."
It takes several seconds' patience, but Ryou does look up. First at Watanuki's hand, and then at Watanuki. "Small steps," Watanuki encourages him. "All you have to do, is one thing at a time."
Tentatively at first, Ryou reaches up, takes the outstretched hand and lets Watanuki guide him to his feet. "See, that wasn't so difficult. Now let's do something about this bird's nest you have here." He finger-combs Ryou's dark hair into some semblance of order, taking care around the raw tender scar, parting his hairline over his right eye.
Ryou stands quiescent, closing his eyes when Watanuki's fingers skim his forehead, and this one quiet gesture gives Watanuki a pang. Seeing the dark fringe of Ryou's lashes, the tender sadness lingering about his mouth; it reminds him of a lone cupcake, with one blue candle pressed into the center. Or that moment, late on some winter's night, when Watanuki has looked up from a book, a drink, a pile of yarn in his lap and realizes the room has all along been silent, still as a frozen pond under a blanket of snow.
It was times such as those, when his price seemed the uttermost extremity of what he could bear. When he was so selfishly grateful that no one was around to ask him whether it was too much, if he might not wish to change his mind, after all.
He knows what's in Ryou's heart right now. He knows, because his own heart has been shaped and stretched near to breaking by the same pain. And it is for this recognition, this muted lonely echo resonating with its own slow pulse between them, that he lets his palm rest on Ryou's cheek.
Ryou's eyes open and focus on him; a question trapped in amber, the same shade that's haunted the fringes of Watanuki's life near as long as he can recall. It seems those eyes have always been before him, they've always come back to him, and he can't imagine any life without them which wouldn't be too desolate to contemplate.
He mustn't wish. He can't promise. Standing as he does upon the very fulcrum of fate, he has to mind every word, every gesture, remaining forever vigilant against upsetting the fragile balance of events.
But he is still human. And the heart within him still beats and aches and yearns as much as anyone else's.
Knowing this, he addresses the cautious light, barely flickering in the depths of Ryou's gaze. "A person who wishes to stay by my side needs to stand. Sometimes they will have to fight for it. They won't have the luxury of giving up."
He's thinking of Shizuka, standing in the rain for ten hours. Standing and shooting, standing and fighting, never backing down from any threat he faced. He's thinking of Haruka, standing even in the afterlife, his presence and strength unwavering.
"Is that a price?" murmurs Ryou, watching him closely now, voice barely more than a breath.
"It's how things are," says Watanuki. "I would rather it was easier, but it never has been."
Sensing he's said all he should, he remains still, holding Ryou's gaze, feeling them both poised upon the axis point of time. A crux, around which fate and future both wait, suspended. Eye to eye. Hand to cheek. Even their chests rise and fall in barely perceptible counterpoint.
"In that case....," Ryou begins, before tensing, leaving Watanuki hanging when he blinks and glances off toward the open door. Their stilled pocket of time is broken by a quick hard gust of wind, rain spattering against the back of the shop. "Someone. Coming?"
Watanuki feels it too then, the faintest shivering at the outermost edges of the shop's boundaries, and withdraws his hand with unexpected reluctance, stepping back a pace.
"Hm. It won't be long. Why don't you go wash your face. I think you'll meet someone interesting soon."
*****
16.
Considering the injuries he'd sustained in the attack, Ryou's recovery goes better than anyone had the right to hope. Which is something Watanuki has to remind them both of occasionally, because as Ryou had predicted in that shared dream, he is not the same as he had been.
His smile, his laughter, his comfortable self-assurance; these are all conspicuously absent, in those first weeks he spends at the shop. When Ryou is awake, he is mainly silent. Remote, to a degree that compels Watanuki to keep a very close eye on him, fearing he might simply decide to slip away into thin air, when no one is looking. And Ryou needs considerable looking after at first, because even the most basic tasks--dressing himself, keeping track of his house slippers, eating meals--are all too much for him to manage on his own.
It isn't his physical coordination that hampers him, so much as his mental focus, which is apt to slip and break at any moment. He's capable of putting clothes on, but then forgets how to fasten them. Watanuki will remind him how to do one shirt button in the morning, and Ryou can do the rest, if nothing distracts him. But then by the next evening, the ability to undo buttons may well have left him. The same goes for eating utensils; his skills with them come and go, much like his listening comprehension, and conversation.
It doesn't take long before Watanuki can sense when Ryou is giving his utmost effort at engaging with his surroundings. For although his gaze remains distant, and his response to anything outside himself is a bare minimum, when he does manage to focus on some task, he looks to be putting all of himself into it, as long as he's able. And once he's exerted himself all he can, the evidence becomes clear in the extent of his withdrawal afterward.
"I appreciate that you put so much energy into breakfast," Watanuki tells him, on the morning of the tenth day. "But can I ask you to wipe your chin? You've got a bit of jam, right here," pointing to his own chin.
Ryou goes on staring in the vicinity of Watanuki's teacup, no change from the past five minutes, though his fingers twitch a fraction on the napkin on his knee.
"You know where your napkin is, you know what I'm talking about," Watanuki observes. "I don't mind helping, but maybe you'd like to try it for yourself?"
As much as possible, he wants to be mindful of Ryou's dignity, and his independence. For although Ryou shows no outward concern for either, Watanuki imagines there must be a great many things currently locked inside the young man's head, which he simply cannot pull together the mechanics to sort out and express just yet. He tries not to take over and do anything for Ryou, without first giving Ryou the choice to do it for himself. Having been an invalid himself a few times before, he knows how important these little allowances can be.
But at least for this particular morning, dealing with his napkin is one chore too many. Ryou chooses to ignore it, in favor of watching a far spot on the rug, with heavy-lidded eyes.
"Call me picky all you want." Watanuki scoots around the side of the table, to sit next to Ryou, and tug his napkin off his knee. "But personally, I don't think friends should let friends go around with jam on their chins." He dabs at the spot on Ryou's chin, and then finding it too sticky, dips the corner of the napkin into a nearby water glass, and has another go.
Ryou sits still and quiet under his ministrations, but the faintest frown crosses his features, when Watanuki is done.
"You want to tell me something?" He isn't expecting a response; Ryou looks very much as if the next item immediately on his agenda is a nap. But then the crease between his brows deepens, and again his hands shift on his knees, as if they want to grasp at something.
"Peach. Jam," he pronounces, with quiet care.
"Hm," considers Watanuki. "That's a good idea. When they come into season, maybe I'll send you out for a bushel, and make preserves. Though I'll warn you, I'm picky about peaches, too."
Ryou ponders this, with a stillness better suited to a tree or a boulder, before yawning widely. Watanuki glances outside, where the chilly morning is going foggy gray and quiet.
"Don't blame you for wanting to sleep," he says. "But I've got some knitting I want to finish. You want help getting to your bed?"
Evidently not, since Ryou only breathes out and tilts over where he sits, aiming in the general direction of Watanuki's lap. Before Watanuki can protest, or fend him off long enough to grab a pillow, his eyes have drifted shut and his head and shoulder are dead weight, pinning Watanuki's leg.
"Fine," Watanuki sighs, trying to shift about, knowing he might as well make himself comfortable. "But just this once."
**
If there is one advantage to living as long as he has, living the last several years in solitude, with disappointments he knows to be irreconcilable, it's that most other trials tend to pale in comparison. Yes, he admits it bruises him, to look across the breakfast table at Ryou's empty gaze. And of course it aches, every time his attempts at conversation are met with a vague halting mumble, or most commonly, silence.
Those are the times he reminds himself where Ryou has come back from, and that his physical injuries are still healing. While Ryou is puzzling slowly over shirt buttons, his brother is learning to get around in a wheelchair, and his sister goes everywhere with a notepad in her pocket, while she and her family learn enough sign language to communicate. By all rights, Ryou should not be anywhere near as capable as he is.
A fortnight passes, becomes three weeks, a month, and any time Watanuki is tempted to feel bereft over what's missing in this young man, he clings to his recollection of that last afternoon; Ryou striding through the front entry, after finally striking the target he'd been struggling toward for years, radiant in his victory, folding his medal into Watanuki's palm.
Such a power as Watanuki had sensed then could not be simply snatched away by a single mishap, no matter how awful. It may have been deferred for a time, sent into temporary hibernation while its host rested and healed. But Watanuki can only choose to believe that having found it and claimed it, Ryou could not lose what was intrinsic to him.
Which is why, on his fifth week of convalescing in the shop, when Ryou appears to suffer a sort of relapse, seeming disinterested in leaving his bed for a day and a half, Watanuki fetches out the gold medal he's been keeping tucked away on his person all this time.
"You remember this?" he asks, kneeling by Ryou's futon, and ducking down into his line of sight. "You're here, but you still haven't taken this back, like you said you would."
For a moment, he sees Ryou's eyes widen and focus on the medal, tracking its slight swinging motion, dangling from the ribbon Watanuki holds. Then abruptly he closes his eyes and rolls over, showing Watanuki his back.
Ah. Avoidance. That's what this is about. Well, it's worlds better than nothing at all. Watanuki can probably work with this.
"Maybe you've decided this is too difficult," he muses aloud. He can tell by the tense set of Ryou's shoulders that he's not actually trying to sleep, and if he's not sleeping he'll be listening. "Maybe you feel it would be easier to just give up. In which case you must think I'm very troublesome, for not allowing you to. So I might as well warn you, I've nagged people far more uncooperative than yourself, for a lot longer."
There comes a soft huff from Ryou, and then he reaches up to yank at his pillow, and stick it firmly over his head, keeping it pinned there with one arm.
"You're making progress, you know," Watanuki mentions, not even bothering to hide his grin. "A few weeks ago, I'm not sure you could've done that."
"Please," says Ryou. "Stop." His voice is muffled, ragged and sad, but that is so much more feeling than he's shown since he woke up. Which is why Watanuki gets up, goes to the other side of the bed and kneels again, laying his hand over Ryou's, atop his pillow.
"No," he answers softly. "I won't stop. And I won't let you stop, either. You have to be stubborn, if you're going to get better. I will drive you crazy if I have to, and I don't care if it makes you angry at me. Giving up is not an option. I won't accept it."
"No point left," Ryou mumbles under his pillow. "Not worth it."
Though his first impulse is to bristle right out into a righteous argument, Watanuki makes himself pause, and consider. Ryou still has enough trouble with words, that he uses them sparingly, most often leaving Watanuki to fill in details and inferences to find what Ryou actually means to communicate.
And the more he thinks it over from Ryou's perspective, the more this mood and his words make sense.
"The way you feel, right now. I've felt that same way before," he says. "When I was your age, and I could hardly go anywhere without spirits attacking me. And later, when I worked for Yuuko-san. There was a day when I woke up, and realized I couldn't remember my parents at all."
Ryou's hand tightens under his, clenching at the pillow, and Watanuki knows he's listening hard. "I couldn't remember where I lived before this place. I didn't know what foods I liked, or what was good. I didn't know anything at all, about my life before I came here."
"You lost....your memory."
At various points over the years, Watanuki had mentioned a few of the basic facts to Ryou, though he had never explained it fully, feeling that somehow, it wasn't appropriate. Though now he sees the time has come, this story is something Ryou definitely needs to hear.
"I gave up my memories of my life, to help some people who were very important. I didn't know this at the time, because I'd even forgotten the wish and the price I'd paid. A lot of the time I was frightened, trying to get along when it felt like most of me was missing. That's when I was falling off into dreams all the time. I couldn't control anything that was happening to me. And the worst part, was how no one else could understand."
Ryou stirs slightly in his bed, shifting his arm just enough to get the pillow off his face. "What'd you do?"
Shizuka must have known, Watanuki thinks. And Haruka as well. That someday, he would need to tell this to someone. If only so that he would remember what it had been like, and that he'd found a way to live through it. Because as lonely, futile, and miserable as his life in the shop has sometimes seemed, he has actually made it through times just as difficult. The current situation was a perfect case in point.
Despite every trial he'd faced, he had eventually overcome. He'd found his footing again, and moved forward stronger than before. And now this is his lesson, to pass on to another in need.
"For awhile, I thought a lot about giving up," he answers honestly. "I didn't feel I was meant to be in the world, the way most people are. I never had a real place in it, not like you do, or anyone else you've known. It seemed to me, that the fact I existed caused a lot more trouble than I was worth." He pauses, smiling sadly, and has to sigh.
"But then several people went to a lot of trouble, to show me that it was important that I stay in the world. I wasn't sure why it mattered to them. But because they cared, eventually I knew I had to make an effort. I had to be persistent, about existing. Even when it hurt, when it seemed impossible. Even when it didn't seem worth it to me."
"What about. When other people hurt you." Now the voice under the pillow is small and miserable, and Watanuki perceives the rest of what brought this spell on. What had happened to Ryou was enough to damage anyone's trust in the human race. He had learned in one of the most shocking, awful ways possible, that the world was not as safe as he'd always made it out.
In all this time, Watanuki has never forgotten Kohane's mother, and what he and Kohane both had suffered from her. Nor has he forgotten people he's met since, who had answered their own fears and frustrations with violence against others. It had taken him quite awhile, but eventually he could appreciate those encounters, once he was able to grasp what they'd taught him.
"At those times," he tells Ryou, curling his fingers around to give his hand a squeeze, "it's especially important to be stubborn. Don't let those people stop you. Don't let them make you less than who you are. There will always be people with enough strength to hurt you, but none of them has any real power to change you. Not if you don't give it to them."
The pillow slides back a bit more, allowing Watanuki a glimpse of Ryou's nose. One downturned corner of his mouth. "They took something. My chance. I was....I wanted to tell you. And they took it."
Watanuki could tell him that while his attackers might have delayed his plans, they didn't actually rob him of all opportunity. He could mention that there would be so many chances in the future, that someday Ryou will look around and see how full of choices his life truly is. But he senses that Ryou doesn't need lectures right now. He doesn't need someone telling him things he can figure out on his own. What he needs, is to know that someone holds faith in him, and knows his obstacles are not bigger than he is.
"Do you remember when we first met? You came to find me at Tango no Sekku. And I knew I was going to meet someone special. Because you sent me something, to let me know."
"You told me. That dream." Ryou sighs. "With the carp picture."
"And you remember what I asked you? If you knew the legend of the carp, who became a dragon?"
"It swam up. A waterfall. And jumped the....Dragon Gate."
"That carp didn't get to become a dragon because it picked an easy task," Watanuki tells him. "It decided to do something that others of its kind would think impossible. And I think we both know you've always had that kind of potential. So don't try to tell me now that you, of all people, would give up on all you could become, just because you've finally met the waterfall." He strokes his thumb across the sharp ridge of Ryou's knuckles, and then pushes up off his knees, stands and quietly departs for the engawa, leaving Ryou to measure his courage against his choices.
**
He's watching the fretful, rain-spattered wind tossing the treetops, throwing tiny sprays of water under the eaves, to speckle the wooden deck. A particularly insistent gust spatters his glasses, and in that moment he feels the distinct need to brew a pot of tea. Orange pekoe, with a sprinkling of anise in the leaves. He doesn't have any frosted tea cakes today, but he does have blueberry coffee cake, and that should serve just as well.
Crossing the threshold on the way back in, he encounters Ryou. Sitting in the rear parlor, watching him through the doorway. Hair mussed from bed and sticking up on one side; yukata held closed with a haphazard, clumsy knot to the obi.
For a moment, they regard each other in silence. Watanuki waiting, privately itching to comb Ryou's hair down, while Ryou struggles for the words he wants.
"If you gave up," he eventually says. "Disappeared. I wouldn't have....got to meet you."
Watanuki tips his chin in acknowledgment, and then pulls off his glasses, to wipe off the water spots. "That's true. And if you were to give up, I would lose an incredibly precious person. Someone who has made me very glad I didn't disappear, back then."
"It's hard." Ryou's shoulders drop, along with his head, as he looks down to his knees. "Everything. I don't." He blows out a harsh breath, curling his arms in around himself, and if Watanuki didn't know better, if he hadn't had this lesson driven home to him so hard, so many times, he would wish there was any way he could stop this anguish, tear away to the edge of the world with it and fling it off, so it could never find Ryou again.
"What do I do?" Ryou pleads. And Watanuki isn't deaf, he isn't heartless, nor is he impervious enough to just wait here and do nothing, while someone he cherishes falls apart before his eyes.
He crosses to Ryou, bending down to offer his hand. "The first thing you do, is stand up. Here."
It takes several seconds' patience, but Ryou does look up. First at Watanuki's hand, and then at Watanuki. "Small steps," Watanuki encourages him. "All you have to do, is one thing at a time."
Tentatively at first, Ryou reaches up, takes the outstretched hand and lets Watanuki guide him to his feet. "See, that wasn't so difficult. Now let's do something about this bird's nest you have here." He finger-combs Ryou's dark hair into some semblance of order, taking care around the raw tender scar, parting his hairline over his right eye.
Ryou stands quiescent, closing his eyes when Watanuki's fingers skim his forehead, and this one quiet gesture gives Watanuki a pang. Seeing the dark fringe of Ryou's lashes, the tender sadness lingering about his mouth; it reminds him of a lone cupcake, with one blue candle pressed into the center. Or that moment, late on some winter's night, when Watanuki has looked up from a book, a drink, a pile of yarn in his lap and realizes the room has all along been silent, still as a frozen pond under a blanket of snow.
It was times such as those, when his price seemed the uttermost extremity of what he could bear. When he was so selfishly grateful that no one was around to ask him whether it was too much, if he might not wish to change his mind, after all.
He knows what's in Ryou's heart right now. He knows, because his own heart has been shaped and stretched near to breaking by the same pain. And it is for this recognition, this muted lonely echo resonating with its own slow pulse between them, that he lets his palm rest on Ryou's cheek.
Ryou's eyes open and focus on him; a question trapped in amber, the same shade that's haunted the fringes of Watanuki's life near as long as he can recall. It seems those eyes have always been before him, they've always come back to him, and he can't imagine any life without them which wouldn't be too desolate to contemplate.
He mustn't wish. He can't promise. Standing as he does upon the very fulcrum of fate, he has to mind every word, every gesture, remaining forever vigilant against upsetting the fragile balance of events.
But he is still human. And the heart within him still beats and aches and yearns as much as anyone else's.
Knowing this, he addresses the cautious light, barely flickering in the depths of Ryou's gaze. "A person who wishes to stay by my side needs to stand. Sometimes they will have to fight for it. They won't have the luxury of giving up."
He's thinking of Shizuka, standing in the rain for ten hours. Standing and shooting, standing and fighting, never backing down from any threat he faced. He's thinking of Haruka, standing even in the afterlife, his presence and strength unwavering.
"Is that a price?" murmurs Ryou, watching him closely now, voice barely more than a breath.
"It's how things are," says Watanuki. "I would rather it was easier, but it never has been."
Sensing he's said all he should, he remains still, holding Ryou's gaze, feeling them both poised upon the axis point of time. A crux, around which fate and future both wait, suspended. Eye to eye. Hand to cheek. Even their chests rise and fall in barely perceptible counterpoint.
"In that case....," Ryou begins, before tensing, leaving Watanuki hanging when he blinks and glances off toward the open door. Their stilled pocket of time is broken by a quick hard gust of wind, rain spattering against the back of the shop. "Someone. Coming?"
Watanuki feels it too then, the faintest shivering at the outermost edges of the shop's boundaries, and withdraws his hand with unexpected reluctance, stepping back a pace.
"Hm. It won't be long. Why don't you go wash your face. I think you'll meet someone interesting soon."
*****