Room 504, Sunday Evening

[intraspective]

If you asked Ino the steps that had been involved in getting her from the lobby to her room and being clean for the first time in days… Ino wouldn't have been able to answer you.

At the moment she was more consumed with toying with the edge the over-sized shirt she normally slept in (it was soft and clean and the room was clean and smelled like flowers and Zack was there and and and) and leaning against Zack.

She knew she should… say something. Or do something. Her hair desperately needed to be brushed out.

But she was just going to take a bit before thinking that far ahead was plausible and, at the moment, just be.

That was okay, wasn't it?

[For that boy.]

Comments

[puppy_fair]

Zack wasn't going to complain, Zack wasn't going to push. He'd brought her up and cleaned her, helped her go through the motions of getting ready for bed, even, and all the while, he'd been murmuring to her, quietly, telling her that he was there and she was safe and he loved her.

Now, he was making a reach for her hairbrush, and sitting down beside her, quietly setting to work trying to ease the snarls out of her hair.

[intraspective]

She wasn't going to protest--just like she hadn't protested anything else that had happened this evening--and tried to find the right thoughts to put in order.

Everything seemed fragmented. Broken. She needed to try harder.

//I am... never playing Frisbee again...//

It wasn't a joke.

[puppy_fair]

"We'll being a baseball next time," Zack replied, softly.

It seemed like the thing to say.

"I left the Frisbee in the woods, anyhow."

[intraspective]

Ino shivered, fingers curling in the fabric of her nightshirt.

//Didn't... Didn't even see...//

She shook her head, heedless of the fact that Zack had a hairbrush and was using it.

//So scared.// She was still scared, still non-verbal, still trying to put reality back in order.

This time it hadn't been seven months.

[puppy_fair]

He was still adjusting to her voice in his mind as it was. It wasn't difficult to tell that wherever she'd been, it had been... more than horrible.

"But it's okay now," he whispered. "The island is healing... You're back, it's okay."

He was trying, now, to sound reassuring. He suspected that he mostly came off as begging.

[intraspective]

There was a long long pause as she took what he said and realized that he wasn't as okay as he wanted to be for her.

//I love you,// Ino said, twisting to curl into him. //I'm s-sorry.//

Sorry for being upset, sorry for feeling broken, sorry for having disappeared...

[puppy_fair]

"You have nothing to be sorry for," Zack murmured gently, not taking his eyes from the task at hand. Tangles. Hair. Brushing through them. Being close to Ino, really, was what it all boiled down to.

Never letting her go again.

"I love you, too."

[intraspective]

//What... What happened here?// she asked, after a floundering breathless minute of struggling to come up with something that wasn't a recitation of what that little girl had said.

When she was good, she was very very good...

Ino shivered, cold but not because of Fandom.

[puppy_fair]

"Something broke," Zack explained. "The machine under the island, I think."

He'd been down there once before, but it wasn't on this Fandom. He'd died down there, too. He was trying hard not to think too hard on that fact.

"But they've fixed it. It's better, now."

[intraspective]

And those worlds were still out there.

//Are you... okay?//

Because focusing on him meant she didn't have to focus on herself.

[puppy_fair]

"Me?" Zack blinked up at that question, yes. If he wasn't so tired all of the time lately, he might even have given an incredulous laugh. As it stood... Just looking. Blinking. "I'm fine. I was just worried. Nothing to worry about anymore, though."

So he'd just be a big baby if he wasn't okay, now. Right.

[intraspective]

That... That didn't sound right... did it?

Ino tilted her head and considered that slowly, painstakingly, as she struggled to focus on what he was saying and how he looked instead of dwelling on the exact things she didn't want to dwell on.

//You're still... worried,// she settled on. //It will be okay. I'm... not going anywhere.//

[puppy_fair]

Zack nodded. He set down the hairbrush. He leaned forward, and he wrapped his arms around her.

He wasn't letting go. Again.

"I'm going to hold you to that, you know."

[intraspective]

//Make it a promise,// her voice was very soft as she leaned into him, pulling her feet up to tuck under her. //I... missed you...?//

But she was glad he hadn't been there all the same.

[puppy_fair]

"I missed you too," Zack breathed, scooting backwards a little, tugging her along with him. In his lap? Please? Closer?

There was no such thing, just then, as close enough.

He just wished he could hear her speak.

[intraspective]

His lap was good. His lap was safe and comfy and she could press herself against him like she was trying to sink into his skin.

If she did that, then he'd never be far from her.

//It... It happened before...// Ino's thoughts whispered.

[puppy_fair]

"It...?"

Being gone? Zack had to ask, though. He wasn't going to guess, didn't want to risk getting it wrong. Not with how fragile she seemed, right then.

[intraspective]

She felt like she was made out of glass. Brittle enough to break and yet soft enough to curl to the side so she could press her palms to his chest and listen to his heartbeat.

That was soothing. Ino sighed, the most noise she'd made out loud since she'd been scooped up in his arms, and closed her eyes.

//I spent seven months the last time...// she said, knowing that didn't make full sense and not sure what to do about it if she even should. //In a different place and time. I... I...//

Were there even words to explain how deathly certain she'd been that it'd happen again and they'd be stuck?

[puppy_fair]

"They got you home way sooner than that, this time," Zack whispered. And it had been 'they.' He'd been all but useless this weekend, himself. He'd killed a few monsters here and there. And he'd worried. "Just a couple of days."

He couldn't imagine what he'd have done if he'd been made to spend seven months as a vampire.

Go insane, probably, just like the vampire that his other self had been.

[intraspective]

She shook in his arms, like a leaf in a storm as tears started up again.

//Only a week for them here,// Ino managed. //Seven months for me. Almost two years for L-Lana.//

Who he didn't know and who she'd fallen out of touch with. Maybe she'd... try it again. Romeo had been there the last time.

//I thought... most people here now didn't... weren't here... for that. When it happened again I-I didn't think we'd make it back."

[puppy_fair]

He didn't know what to say, to that. It was other people who had figured out what was wrong. It was other people who had fixed it.

All he'd done was what he always did. Shut down. Pick up a sword. Kill.

He was made to kill.

"They wouldn't stand for that," he murmured. They. He didn't help. He couldn't say 'we.' "Everyone was coming home. Everyone."

[intraspective]

//They...?//

Ino tilted her head up to study him. Well, his chin. Getting his eyes would require moving her head from his chest and she wasn't inclined to do that any time soon.

[puppy_fair]

"I wasn't doing anybody much good this weekend," Zack admitted, feeling, for all the world, as though he was only a few inches tall. "It was other people who fixed things. I just..."

He shrugged. He waved his hand a bit.

"Did what I always do."

Killed things. Plenty of which had been monsters that used to be human.

[intraspective]

It was peculiar how that made her warm inside, wasn't it? It was something to worry at, to fuss about, but right now...

//I'm sorry,// Ino murmured, shifting so she could pull herself up to face him, using his chest as support because she wasn't putting space between them at all. //You were worried.//

Worried to the point of that. Ino felt... good? And peculiarly awful about it all at once.

//I'm right here now.//

[puppy_fair]

He'd still accomplished things. Just... they were mostly things that he could do with his eyes closed, and he hadn't been paying much attention to what the monsters were, after a while. They called him things, they tried to kill him. He lit them on fire and broke their bones and made them wish they hadn't.

"You are," he agreed. "I... I'm sorry... I mean, that it was you. I should've..."

Been the one to get the Frisbee? What?

[intraspective]

She buried her face against him.

//You're not at fault.//

[puppy_fair]

He might have had an easier time believing that if she could just tell him so.

He sighed, closed his eyes, and nodded a little.

"Are you hurt?"

It... didn't have anything to do with whether or not he was guilty. But it seemed important, too. Yeah, he'd cleaned her up. Yeah, he'd looked her over for injuries. He was still going to ask anyhow.

[intraspective]

She was silent, she'd been silent this whole time, as she considered that.

//Not really,// Ino determined, her voice quiet. //My head and my chest hurt but I'm not... hurt.//

Just too much telepathy (not that it was stopping her from using it now, please note) and too much foul air. Both would pass.

[puppy_fair]

"Okay."

And then... then he fell silent. Holding her in his arms seemed like the most important thing right now, and he could deal with what was troubling himself later.

He'd settled into that smile, again. The one that meant that he was smiling because smiling was the strong thing to do. It didn't matter that she couldn't see. This time, that smile was for himself.

[intraspective]

Any other time she might have seen and given him trouble for that smile, she hated that smile, but tonight, now, Ino never looked up.

She didn't have anything else to say other than a mind-murmured 'I love you' again, as Ino lay against him and slowly, without even realizing it, drifted from being awake to falling into a deep, boneless sleep.

It was safe, here.

It was okay.