CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
The main bathing area was kept clear for Tetsuya and Thalia’s use; although there was not one among them who could truly say they did not need it, Thalia’s need was clearly greatest. The others made do with the stall showers scattered on all floors of the vessel.
Harada was growing more worried about Thalia rather than less; she was behaving with such uncharacteristic timidity, and seemed unable to articulate answers to any but the most basic questions.
He put her down gently beside the tub. “Thalia, love, I’m going to shower first. Then I’ll come back and we’ll get the worst of it off you before we get into the bath. Otherwise the water will be unusable as soon as we touch it,” he explained. She lifted her head, and he had his first good look at her face.
The shock of it was like a kick to his solar plexus; he didn’t want her to see how appalled he was, but felt his eyes widen with horror, his mouth fall agape with disbelief. The left side of her face looked like it belonged to some other creature entirely, so misshapen and bloody was it. Her eye was completely swollen shut, and the cut on her lip still trickled blood. Bruises blossomed on alabaster skin like dark flowers.
“Ah, what did I let him do to you?” he said, anguished.
“You didn’t let him, any more than I did,” she said reasonably, and attempted a tremulous smile that was a parody of her normal one.
“Even now you argue with me,” he complained, pressing a kiss to the undamaged side of her forehead, cupping the back of her head in his hand tenderly.
“Not winning any beauty contests for a while, I guess,” Thalia said wryly, sounding a little more like herself. She suddenly recalled the hostages. “Oh! Tetsu, there was a woman with a baby” – he nodded, reassuring her.
“Yamamoto got them safely on board. They’re fine, which is more than can be said for you,” he said.
“Please don’t leave,” she said in a tiny, breathless voice.
“I’m not leaving; I’ll be right over there, and I promise it will not take me long,” he replied. She swallowed, then nodded; it looked like she was forcing herself to accept this without panicking.
What had Sekiguchi done to leave her so broken? – he wondered furiously, turning his fear at the changes in her to protective anger.
Thalia tried desperately to get a grip on herself once Tetsuya was out of sight. She hadn’t realized she would collapse like this as soon as she saw him, like a typical female in a daytime drama. She was disgusted with herself, and yet somehow could not scold herself out of the fear that was on her.
This planet terrified her, she had to admit it. She felt vulnerable, utterly exposed, as if something might rush in and rape or consume or possess her at any moment. The loss of control over her own body and mind on the surface had been the worst thing she had ever gone through in this lifetime, and she could not endure even the thought of having it happen again.
With Tetsuya here, she felt safe enough to relax into her feelings instead of keeping a guard in place for the sake of others as well as herself; but she did not find the comfort in emotional self-awareness this time that she usually did.
She was afraid even to lean too hard on him, since she was uncertain he could forgive her for what the elementals had made her do. She actually thought of not telling him, which was also unlike her, but she remembered that Seizo had once wisely cautioned her about trying to pretend everything was all right when it wasn’t. Harada was perceptive; he would see through the pretense and the secret would sit between them and grow.
She began to cry and shake again as she tried to figure out how to tell him. What words could possibly convey something so unreal, so unbelievable? She knew how she would feel if someone told her a story like this: oh, right, ‘the aliens made me do it’, or ‘the devil made me do it’, or ‘this or that god made me do it’ – it was the flimsy excuse of psychopaths who got caught, yet that was her truth.
Tetsuya came back with a basin of warm water and several cloths to find her huddled, trembling, inside his filthy jacket, with silent tears coursing down her cheeks. He did not take his jacket immediately; he reached for her hand first, and when she gave it to him he wiped the blood and dirt from it as carefully as possible. From there he worked up her left arm to the shoulder, then washed her other hand and arm with equal care, trying not to notice her bouts of shivering as they came and went in waves. At least she stopped sometimes now, he told himself.
He went to her feet next, and bathed her legs one at a time. His fingers expressed to her, though he did not know it, how much he had missed her and how lovely he found her, but also how worried he was. His love was balm to her, and slowly she started to heal.
Her thigh wound was still bleeding a little, though it showed signs of starting to clot and it was not as deep as he had feared. He frowned, glancing at the tub.
“It’s all right,” she said unexpectedly. “If we apply antibiotics and a waterproof bandage, I can still go into the tub.”
He smiled at her. “I forget sometimes that you’ve had medical training.”
“So do I,” she said, and smiled back at him. It was a small thing, but it gave him hope that she would soon be fully restored to her usual self. He went and got the supplies she specified, and she helped clean and dress the wound herself.
He lifted a fresh cloth to her face, the undamaged side first; then, very carefully, hardly touching her skin, he wiped most of the blood from the injured side. Suddenly he was overwhelmed by a burst of love for her; he leaned in and tenderly kissed the swollen eye and split lip, caressing the unhurt cheekbone with one hand as the other arm came up around her from behind, gently removing his jacket. She still had her filthy uniform shirt on, and when he unbuttoned it she cringed a little, involuntarily, and began shaking again.
This aroused certain dark suspicions in his mind that he refused to look at directly; now was not the time.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
He drew the bath, then came and tilted her chin up until she looked at him with her one good eye. “Let’s take it one thing at a time, Lyra,” he said, that strange name from long ago and far away slipping out again at the right moment. She looked startled, then comforted, at hearing herself called by that name. “I don’t know what happened, but I know you need to feel clean again. So we’ll start with the outside; the most obvious and easy-to-reach.”
She nodded, but did not speak.
He brought her gently over to the tub and helped her in with him, cradling her. “You’ve talked about how often the physical is a symbol of the spiritual; so for now, think about the bath. Don’t try to think past that. Think of what water means to you, all the things you need and use it for.” His voice was always beautiful to her, but now it was almost musical; soothing, deep, a little rough at the edges.
Thalia relaxed, realizing he was right. Bathing her body was certainly necessary, and it did not trouble or preoccupy her mind, because she knew how to go about the process automatically. She neither knew how to cleanse her soul, nor doubted that it would be far more difficult a task. So she would start with her body, as Tetsuya said, and trust that she would know how to cleanse her conscience when the time came. The bath could help her with that, as he said, if she applied her own principles.
It had been too long since she had performed any rituals or observances anyway, she told herself. Her patroness deities had been good to her, as always, but she felt she had been neglecting an essential part of herself for too long.
“Water for purification,” she said in a low voice, relaxing back against Tetsuya in the warmth of the bath. She was not really aware of speaking aloud, fully concentrating on the concept. “For cleansing; for refreshment, clarity, for life itself. Water for emotion.” Her voice shook there. “Water for true strength; flexible, adaptable, unbreakable.”
Her voice sounded somehow ancient and young at once; the hair on his neck stood up, so strong was his feeling that he had listened to her intone these words before, long ago; his mind gave him fleeting glimpses of a white stone temple dedicated to an ancient goddess.
“Morrighan, Great Queen, Mother of Furies; my gratitude for your guidance through another battle. May each drop of blood shed bring cleansing to all who need it; may justice prevail in all things, for the good of all beings," she breathed, her voice taking on the harmonics of the Fury, but with an undertone of sorrow rather than rage.
The air stirred suddenly, a breeze sweeping through the chamber on a breath of dragon's blood incense and autumn leaves; a long black raven's feather fell into the water - the goddess was here, Tetsuya knew suddenly, shivering with a delicious sense of dread and awe. "Thank you, Mother and Queen," Thalia whispered, taking the feather and pressing it to her lips, then passing it to him. He did the same without needing to ask, then set the feather carefully beside the extra washcloths. He wondered if it would disappear, or if he might be permitted to keep it. He had not been in the presence of a deity before, at least so far as he knew; he still trembled, but not in fear - his eyes filled with tears of gratitude. The goddess knew their need of Her, and She was here.
Tetsuya wondered if there were other spirits present, deity or not; the air was humming on several different frequencies that seemed just on the very edges of human sensation. It felt electric, or magical, or both. "Brighid, goddess of fire and water; goddess of healing and forging,” Thalia intoned, as if in answer to his thoughts. Her voice was hypnotic, barely audible now, the look in her eye distant but growing calmer. As for him, he felt strangely energized. Thalia lifted her hands, letting the water spill out between her fingers. “Mother, be with us all; grant your blessings on our bodies, our minds, and our souls.”
For a moment, Tetsuya thought he saw reflected in the water an entirely different room; one made of marbled stone, a round copper brazier in the center with a flame blazing upward and a woman standing, unburned, within it. His heart beat faster, wondering what was happening. "Deep within the still center of my being, may I find peace," Thalia continued in a clear voice like a silver bell. She drew in a deep, shuddering breath, then let it out. "Quietly, within the shelter of the bath, may we share peace," she continued, placing the palms of her hands against his; they both took a deep breath and released it. "With gentle power, in the greater circle of our two ships, may we radiate peace," she finished, turning her palms out and up as they drew in one more breath, held it, and released it.
The air was vibrant, somehow, as if on the verge of breaking into music. Tetsuya felt full, complete, and calm for the first time in far too long. He was suddenly very aware of Thalia’s warm weight, her soft curves pressed against him; she was safe, she was magic, and she was his. His body responded to her as lustily as always, his sex stiffening against her legs. This was not the time or place, he rebuked himself; but that part of him never listened to such admonitions. She was injured, and this wasn’t a hot tub in a honeymoon suite, he said to himself even more sternly.
Almost as he thought this, her hand brushed up over his inner thighs, found him and squeezed lightly, startling him.
“I see you like it when I pray,” Thalia said saucily, sounding almost like herself again.
He smiled. “I have a priestess fetish, I guess.” She looked up at him, the expression in her good eye telling him her sex drive was recovering, but also that something was deeply troubling her.
“Tetsu,” she said, and began to cry, to their mutual surprise and dismay. “S – sorry. I didn’t know I’d start up again. I’m still in shock, I think.”
He wrapped his arms around her and let her cry.
“We need to wash your hair,” he said when she was calm. “Stay here while I get the basin.”
She stared after him, amazed at his capacity for nurturing her. She thought of how flabbergasted the terrified new Shinsengumi recruits would be if they heard her describe their Demon Vice-Commander as ‘nurturing’, and got a case of giggles that was nearly as uncontrollable as her tears had been before.
He was, if anything, even more worried about the laughter than he had been about the crying.
“It’s just hysteria,” she said between giggles. “If it gets any worse, you may have to slap me out of it.”
“Tch! It better not get any worse, then, because that won’t happen.”
She laughed harder in her irritation with him. “That’s the normal remedy for hysteria! It snaps the current in the nerve endings.”
“Then you can snap them yourself! I don’t slap women, especially not you.”
This helped snap her out of it, because it occurred to her that he might want to once he knew what had happened on the planet. The barren, cursed planet that filled her with terror and pity that weighed down her heart.
“All right?” he asked more gently.
“For the moment, yes,” she said. “I can’t tell if it’s passed or not entirely.”
He had her lean her head back over the edge of the tub so he could wash her hair for her. This almost made her cry again, just the idea that he would do this.
“But are you sure you want to? I think I can manage it,” she said hesitantly.
“Are you kidding? I’ve been waiting for an excuse.”
“A hair fetish as well? There’s so much I didn’t know,” she said, smiling.
“As it turns out, it’s more of an overall you fetish,” he replied, pouring warm water through her hair into the large basin. “But sure, your hair is a phenomenon all on its own. I don’t think you have one strand exactly the same shade of red as another on your whole head, and it’s as soft as it looks. I can’t see it without wanting to bury my hand in it.”
He was lathering soap into it, his fingers gentle but firm on her scalp, and she tried with all her strength not to start sobbing again with the fear that he might regret all this tenderness once he knew what she had done.
Tears leaked silently from her eyes as she savored his tender ministrations. He cared for her as if she was a small, helpless child, yet managed to do it without making her feel like one.
At length, he helped her out of the water and wrapped her in a huge towel, her hair wrapped in a smaller one, and carried her back to their room in it. Yamamoto was passing down a parallel hallway, and couldn’t help staring a little at the formidable Vice-Chief carrying his Demoness like a sleeping child, a look of sublime tenderness on his face that was only allowed to exist because he was unaware of being observed.
That was when you saw truth in people; when they thought no one was looking. Yamamoto’s heart swelled with affection and pride. He wouldn’t mind following them into hell, he decided; they were amazing.
When Harada had put Thalia to bed and asked for tea to be brought, he sat beside her and traced the outline of her face on the uninjured side. “What else do you need?” he asked.
“I have never needed anything but you,” she replied softly, lifting his hand to her lips. “Thank you; you have healed me more than you know.” Tears were welling up yet again in her eyes, he saw with dismay.
“Please don’t cry any more,” he said.
“Oh, I’m afraid there will be a lot more crying before I’m done,” she said sadly. “I need to tell you what happened down there, despite the fact that I honestly don’t know how, and I would rather face almost any other trial. I don’t know if you’ll ever forgive me,” she said, her voice breaking with sorrow and regret.
“There’s nothing I couldn’t forgive you for,” he said firmly. “And I have no choice anyway – without you I don’t see any point in life. You can’t know how desolate I am when you’re gone, how my entire life stretches out like a vast wasteland if you’re not here to fill it.” His own eyes blurred with tears, but he didn’t fight them for once.
It was at this point Okada Seizo nearly broke down the door, throwing it open so hard it bounced, then standing there looking like a demon.