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He doesn’t know what he is doing at Nodens. Logically, he knows there must be a reason, he must have received orders from his superiors to visit the facilities for... for some reason. There must be one, but he cannot remember what those hypothetical orders might have been. If he’s unable to recall them, chances are his orders weren’t very important, but he is also aware that, given the current circumstances, nothing short of the discovery of an ultimate dragon slaying weapon would be enough to sway his attention away from you. Because —and this is a terrible thing— you are crying.You are crying, as you have been ever since you came back from your last mission. It’s funny, Yuma doesn’t remember the details (it must not have been important), but as soon as you saw him you barreled into him and started bawling your eyes out. There had been an uproar at that; Julietta had practically materialized into existence in the Portal Room, alternating between threatening to castrate the person responsible for those tears and questioning the members of Unit 13 (were they hurt? Bruised? Bleeding? Ambushed? Bullied?) to no avail. Allie wanders in no long after Julietta, and even Nagamimi deigns to make an appearance before being swept into your arms, just before you begin crying with renewed vigor, squeezing the rabbit-like creature.During all of this, the other members of Unit 13 had kept suspiciously quiet; Yuma manages to catch some whispered sentences that he is obviously not meant to hear, but they make no sense (it's not real, you know it's not real). Nothing makes sense. You—Unit 13 is supposed to be an unstoppable force. Not because defeat is unknown to you, but because defeat has proven to be, time and time again, nothing but a temporary situation. Anything that has stopped you before has been a challenge you never fail to surmount, regardless of the number of tries, of failures, of stumbling and falling and always, always, getting up and trying again.It’s why you, Unit 13, the joint effort to stop the dragons as a whole, are still standing.This development is new. It’s terrible. It’s an unknown variable that feels like a fist sinking into his stomach, past the skin and the muscle, and reaching deeper; Yuma feels like throwing up, even though prior to this he had been convinced he was incapable of such weakness.(It all comes to that, in the end, when it’s about him. About you.)Eventually, the rest of Unit 13 are convinced to haul their leader to the medical floor, where immediately Sailas and Brijilt, who had been visiting Nagiri, are subjected to the same treatment and react about as well as the others. Mio is also sobbed upon quite a bit, and you are apologizing, despite your teammate's words (it's not real, you know it's not real). Yuma is only there, basically lurking in the background, because where else would he go, when you are like that?Nurse Maimai and Doctor Hori have to physically restrain you in order to give you a check-up, or attempt to, anyway; it’s obvious there’s no blood and if you were truly hurt your teammates would have already intervened (as they usually do, as you usually do for them, too). But even if nothing is physically wrong with you, it proves to be near impossible to get straight answers to the questions asked by Doctor Hori because you have gone from sobbing-mess to hiccupping-mess. It takes the combined efforts of Nurse Maimai and Chika and Rika, who had abandoned their usual station attracted by the commotion and had, thus, also been nearly sent straight to the floor when you launched yourself at them, to haul you to the Rest Floor, where Julietta had threatened you into resting and all the others to give you space.Yes, him included, not that he had any plans to obey that particular order.Yuma remains, even when the others leave, because, although he is unsure of what to do and whether anything he could do would even be of any help at all, he cannot possibly leave you alone like this.Even your teammates have made themselves scarce, and Yuma takes the opportunity to ask you if there's anything he can do, but no sooner he approaches, your eyes start to water, your hands practically flying to grasp something dangling from your neck; he doesn’t know what he’ll do if you start crying again.(Even in this, he’s useless.)At this point, Yuma is more than a little distressed, more than just a little bit worried; but most of all, he’s angry: you are hurt, and it's his own fault for not being strong enough to protect you, to get rid of all dragons once and for all, and give you a world in which you can be safe and happy—a world where you do not have to carry this burden on your shoulders and risk your life to achieve a goal that is well beyond human capabilities.He says as much. The words stop your tears, but not in the way he had hoped. When you advance toward him, he instinctively steps back at the fury burning in your eyes; but you move forward undeterred, your arms wrapping around him in a hold he has no hope to escape simply because never in his training had anyone seen fit to teach him how to deal with such underhanded attacks.“You... You are such an idiot; you are so important to us; how could you not see that?”The words should cut him open, but instead they hold him together, and you are so warm against him. He really thinks he can’t be blamed for wrapping his arms around you, for wanting to keep you safe and far away from whatever must have hurt you, from whatever intends to try to do so again. If only Yuma were strong enough, you wouldn’t have to suffer needlessly like this. But he isn’t, and so, he cannot promise you a world without tears.The thought hurts, it tears him apart. It makes him hold you closer, tighter, to the point where he’s sure he must be hurting you.It must be so, because you push against him. Away from him.(His heart, the one soft thing he cannot strengthen no matter how he tries, aches inside him.)“Please,” he says. It comes to that, he’s reduced to begging, because what else can he do?(What else can he do when faced with one such as you, who was rendered his very existence and creation pointless?)“Please,” he repeats then; he wants to beg, he wants to grovel, he wants—he wants— “Please, let me help you.”And as always, as you have done again and again, you refuse him. It is kindness, but that only makes it worse.“Yuma,” you say, taking hold of his hands. “You don’t have to worry anymore.”But no, that doesn’t make any sense. He needs to worry, he needs to do something; if only you could tell him what he should do, what he can do to help. He would pay any price to help you, to fulfill the role for which he was created, to justify the time and resources wasted on him.But your eyes are dry now, and no amount of begging will change the fact that you don’t need him.(You don’t, and you never have, and you never will; and yet...)“Everything is going to be okay,” you say instead, with the calm of one who has wept all the tears they had, someone who has made peace with whatever the future holds, and Yuma's heart clenches painfully. It has the finality of an oath.(You may not need him, but you still care; otherwise you wouldn’t make such promises to him. The kind he would offer to you if he could.)Unit 13 is already in the Portal Room, only waiting for you (they too, have said their goodbyes, they have made their peace, Yuma realizes, and that cannot be right, because, why would they need to?).Yuma clutches you close, unwilling to let go, because—because he feels that, if he does, it will be the last time he ever gets to hold you.(He's not wrong.)“It's going to be okay,” you repeat, a soft smile in your lips, so gentle, so sad; his eyes fill with saltwater, his throat constricts around the words he wants to say.This is a goodbye, he realizes, and he cannot even ask you to stay.Your hand touches something hanging from your neck; something he recognizes, but his nametag is still around his own neck and—Oh.You step into the portal, and what burns in your eyes is a will refined in a crucible: unyielding, unflinching, unbreakable.
Oh.
You leave and the ‘world’ crumbles around him, but ‘Yuma’ is not worried.After all, you promised everything was going to be okay.