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

[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.