Page 374 of Mercy Written in Blood

"You remember gunfire."

"Some."

"You remember the ambulance?"

"No."

"The operating theatre?"

"No."

"You do not remember your heart stopping in my hands."

Silence. The monitor continued. One beat. Another.

"I felt it end," Renji said. His own voice sounded unfamiliar. Too even. He had not lost control since the ambulance. That was not the same as regaining it. He had built a new structure from necessity and moved within it until the immediate danger passed. Now there was no attacker. No wound requiring intervention. No battlefield to make emotion useful. Only the room. Only Haruki. Only the absence Renji had already experienced for several seconds and could not remove from himself.

"I heard nothing," he said. "Then I heard it again. Your heart. It returned, and I still could not believe you were alive."

Haruki's fingers moved against the blanket.

"Come here."

Renji remained where he was.

"That is not what I meant."

"You cannot support my weight."

"I wasn't asking you to sit on me."

"Your ribs—"

"Renji."

He stopped. Haruki shifted his hand across the mattress. An invitation. Renji looked at it. He had held that hand in the ambulance while blood dried between their fingers. He had pressed it to his forehead and wept before strangers. The memory should have embarrassed him. It did not. He had moved beyond dignity.

He placed his hand in Haruki's. Haruki's fingers closed slowly, weakness visible in the effort. Renji hated the weakness because it proved how close death remained.

Haruki watched him.

"What are you afraid will happen if you tell me?" he asked.

Renji understood immediately. He chose not to.

"Tell you what?"

Haruki's mouth tightened.

"No evasions."

"I am not evading."

"You are nearly a thousand years old. You have turned evasion into etiquette."

"Nine hundred and ninety-eight."

"That is not the useful part of the sentence."