Grey purple dawn had not yet broken the horizon when Sage got up, not by employing an alarm clock or any other device, but due to his own internal timer. Breakfast was for later; Sage’s routine had a pattern that was almost a religion. His first morning task was the kata, body moving in a dance that would be deadly if he had a partner. His arms cut through the air, sending invisible adversaries to certain doom. A leaden thump on his door and the sound of tires squealing away interrupted his concentration, but not his movements. It was only when he heard his name that he went still.

"Rowen?"

A muffled noise was his answer. Sage scowled. If Rowen really felt like partying in Tokyo all night long, by rights he ought to take care of his hangovers privately. The rest of the household was still asleep. Sage sighed impatiently through his nose, stalking over and jerking the door open.

"What do you-"

Rowen collapsed at his feet. Sage was irritated for the three seconds Rowen didn’t move. Then he was worried for the next three he didn’t. "Rowen?"

Rowen stirred. His hair that had been glittergelled and impeccably styled the night before was now hanging lankly around his face, his eye makeup smudged and ghoulish on his drawn features. He attempted to get to his feet, or at least to his hands, and failed miserably. Sprawled there in the floor, in lace-up black leather jeans and blue tank top that only showed a faint shimmer under the grime smudged on it, he looked like a bluejay struggling with broken wings, bewildered by hurt, unaware that he couldn’t fly anymore.

"My god, Rowen, what happened to you?"

"I’m gonna throw up," Rowen informed him, his voice a croak.

"Kuso..." Sage ducked down and draped one of Rowen’s clammy arms around his neck, hauling him to his feet and dragging him to the adjoining bathroom, barely getting Rowen there in time. The archer clutched desperately at the porcelain; his body almost folding in half with the force of heaves that produced nothing from his shuddering frame. Sage wound an arm around his waist, holding him up, letting Rowen cling to him as something wracked his body.

He stilled finally, panting, stomach muscles still jerking against Seiji’s thighs as the rest of him went limp.

"S’no use.. Nothin left…"

"Gods, Rowen.. What did you drink tonight?" Sage released the long bangs that he had been holding out of Rowen’s face.

Rowen shook his head against Sage’s leg, draped over the swordsman’s lap.

"Nothin unusual... But I think... think somebody slipped somethin’ in my drink…" Rowen was sobbing slightly from the force of his nausea, making him seem like a lost boy who’d strayed much too far from neverland. "I just wanted ta go dance..."

The soft words pierced Sage’s heart as surely as any gilded arrow. He smoothed the tangled blue hair, frowning at his shivering best friend.

"Sage..." Rowen’s voice was doing weird things, his accent coming and going in odd tonality. "The floor is covahed in blood, Sage."

Sage gave the tile a panicked glance, wondering if Rowen might have inadvertently gotten dosed with something really awful. But the white floor was clean. "Whatever you got is making you hallucinate. There’s nothing on the floor, close your eyes."

Rowen made a strangled sound. "My eyes are closed, Sage... when they're open the floor’s covahed in worse."

Sage lifted Rowen up into his arms, his gold brows drawn together in anxiety. The archer’s pulse was fluttering in the taut line of his throat. Rowen tried vainly to wipe at his eyes, smearing his eyeliner even more. "Oh god, Sage... am I gonna die?" His voice soared and cracked with anxiety, something it hadn’t been doing much anymore of late.

"I don’t think so," Sage returned honestly. He propped Rowen up against the side of the tub and hauled the tank top off him. Rowen’s arms fell to his sides like a disrobed rag doll. "You’d be dead by now, if you were going to be. Besides, after what we’ve taken, I don’t think a hit of acid or whatever the hell it is is going to kill you now."

"Can ya fix it?" Rowen opened his eyes, and obviously disturbed by what he saw when he looked at Sage, closed them again. Sage tried not to shudder. Rowen’s eyes had been nothing but a black expanse of pupil, rimmed by faint aquamarine. He concentrated on undoing the buckles on Rowen’s pants.

"No... it’s not a wound... I don’t even think Sai could... you have to let it run out."

"Aw, fuck…" Rowen blearily tried to focus on Sage’s hands. "What’re ya doin?"

Sage reached over and wrenched the water on full blast, filling the tub. "Turning you back into Rowen." He dipped his hand into the tub and dampened a cloth with warm water, running it gently over Rowen’s face, cleaning away the kohl smudges and what was left of silvery lipstick. He rinsed and wrung it out several times before sufficiently cleaning the archer’s pale skin free of glitter.

Rowen cooed something softly as Sage lifted his limp arms and wiped them down, finding it very soothing to his drug-blurred conciousness. The smile on his lips melted away almost an instant later as some other image gripped him, confusing even tactile sensation.

Rowen groaned a weak protest as Sage peeled the black leather off of his thighs, jerking off the boots that Rowen had been unable to remove at the door and lifting his chilled form up and then down into the tub. Rowen hissed and thrashed and practically screamed in horror before Sage could convince him that it was just warm water, not the spilled lifeblood of his friends. He curled into a ball at the shallow end of the tub, sobbing quietly, murmuring some fragment of T.S. Eliot to himself, as if using it to ward demons away.

"’I have measured my life in coffee spoons...’"

"Rowen?" Sage tried briefly to touch his soul, thinking to calm him, and recoiled physically in shock. A twisted web of memory and nightmare made a potent terror in his companion’s mind, visions of his friends’ deaths at his own hands and foul rank evil vomited forth from sinister Torii gates. Sage made a mental note to himself to never lay a finger on anything more intoxicating than sake. He had enough nightmares while being stone cold sober.

Rowen cried helplessly into his knees, and rubbed at his reddened eyes with the heels of his hands, rocking himself. Sage caught his wrists before he tried to scrabble his eyes out in an attempt to stop what he was seeing. He climbed into the tub with Rowen and hugged him, rocking with him, not minding the water drenching his loose cotton pants. "Shh... shh Toma... Just a bad dream... that’s all..."

"’I do not think they would sing fa me…’" Rowen tried to hide himself in Sage’s neck.

Sage reached down into the water and scooped it up, pouring it gently over Rowen’s hair, working out the glitter, sudsing it with shampoo when Rowen didn’t protest. "’Where the women come and go, talking of Michaelangelo...’" It was the only line Sage knew, and he offered it carefully.

Rowen’s tears made cool trails down Sage’s back. He nodded. Sage dipped him down and let the water from the faucet run through the soapy indigo strands, smoothing wet fingers over Rowen’s flushed cheeks and through his hair until the hiccuping sobs settled somewhat.

Sage lifted him back out of the water and toweled him down, checking him over just briefly enough to make sure that he had only been drugged, not anything else. There were no bruises or signs of struggle, and Sage knew that the archer wouldn’t have submitted quietly, chemically altered or no. Rowen swayed unsteadily, but he hadn’t been raped that Sage could tell. He didn’t have the heart to investigate any further, he could find out anything more when Rowen came out of it. The swordsman let himself breathe a little easier, putting an arm around Rowen’s waist and helping him to Sage’s bed, tucking him under the blankets and curling up beside him.

Rowen never stopped crying.

"Sing to me." Rowen asked, just when Sage thought he’d fallen asleep, tears muffled silent.

"Rowen-"

"Mom used to sing to me." Rowen hugged Sage’s pillow, smiling to himself, lost now in some more pleasant memory. "She would sing... Like a bird... soft fragments of things she knew, like butterflies pick up bits of things and riddles, and string them together... like beads on a chain, shining shining..." Rowen’s nails clawed a bit at the pillow. "Shining like swords and skulls in the springtime..."

"Rowen, Don’t let it keep you," Sage couldn’t hold all the panic out of his voice now; Rowen was truly frightening to behold. He was glad the others were asleep... Sai would have been quietly freaked and Kento and Ryou would have gone out and blown up half of the city after revenge.

"I can’t stop it, Sage..." Rowen for the first time really sounded like himself.

He began to shake. Sage reached down and held him tightly. "No matter what you see, or feel, I’m here. I’m real. Nothing you see can hurt you."

"Sing." Rowen pleaded, clutching Sage’s hands. "Sing it away..."

Sage sang. Anything that came to mind... but mostly half-forgotten lullabies that he remembered his mother singing to him. When those ran out he tried things Sai had written, even down to just humming melodies he couldn’t remember all the words to.

From four a.m. to nine a.m. that was how it went, every hour or so helping Rowen to the bathroom to hold him while his stomach still tried to get rid of nothing, getting him to swallow a few sips of water here and there, and then to hold his uneasily slumbering form until the next time.

Rowen opened his eyes from a rapidly fading dream of a green aura pushing away darkness, and blinked in groggy puzzlement at the sheets under his hands. He felt warm and safe but confused, his still fuzzy mind making a count of the hands in front of him and coming up with two extra, not to mention the warm body they were attached to. The mattress shifted with motion. "Again? I’ll help you-"

"Sage?"

Sage hesitated, peering at Rowen’s eyes, and brushing a hand over his cheek. "Rowen? Are you feeling better?"

Rowen made a face. "I think I’d like ta have my ribcage taken out an’ scrubbed... and then sleep fa a WEEK... but otha than that... " He yawned hugely, then glanced apprehensively at Sage. "Something... awful happened? You look like you’ve been through a war..." Rowen tried very hard to remember... but came up with fragments only. "I was... on something? I can’t..."

"Don’t." Sage shook his head. "You don’t want to. Are you hungry?"

Rowen’s stomach growled as if on cue. "Yeh..." he grinned. "I’ll-" he swung his legs out of bed to get up, and realized he was wearing absolutely nothing. The blush crept up his back like a red ink wash on rice paper. "Uhh... did you-"

The door shut quietly behind Sage as he went downstairs.

Rowen blinked down at himself and wondered. Then he grinned. Then he flopped over and slept solidly.

"Is there any soup warm?" Sage poked about in one of the cupboards after a bowl.

Sai just about jumped out of his skin, surprised by Sage’s sudden appearance. "Yes... some from breakfast... are you all right? Is Rowen? He’s not in his room-"

"He’s been sick… but he needs some food now." Sage dolloped out a cupful of the clear broth, topped with shaved mushrooms and green onions. Sai took out some rice crackers and added them to the tray, and another bowl of soup. "You need breakfast too... but why didn’t you call Mia or me? You aren’t the nursemaid type."

Sage shrugged, balancing the tray and headed back up to the room. "I didn’t wish to disturb anyone."

Sai raised an eyebrow. His kanji let off a faint warning blip... Something wasn’t being told completely here. But he had learned that sometimes complete truth was a pain, not a virtue. "Well, if he has a relapse... let me know so I can check him, all right?"

"All right." Sage smiled faintly. So did Sai.

Truce.

Sai pondered the dishwasher without seeing it, wondering how he could, in knowing nothing at all, feel he had been told a precious secret.

Rowen drank his soup without the usual slurping racket; his appetite returned full force but not all his energy. "What, no pickles?"

"I doubt your stomach could handle it, and I’ve had enough of your tossing to do me for the rest of my life." Sage nibbled a rice cracker. "And for God’s sakes next time you go out watch your drink more carefully. What a waste if a Samurai Trooper were to go like that. Disgrace your name and-"

Rowen smiled over his soup. "You sound like your grandfather."

Sage looked subtly alarmed. "I mean it, Rowen. Next time might not be so easy. How did you get home?"

"I don’t know," Rowen quietly confessed to the remnants of his soup.

"No one..."

"No." Rowen affirmed, shaking his head. "Sage... For what I remember... but mostly for what I don’t- "

"You’re welcome. And you would so the same for me." Sage demurely fished out a mushroom and nibbled on it. "But if you ever let yourself get into anything so idio-"

"I just can’t go alone anymore..." Rowen sighed.

"Absolutely not."

Rowen beamed. "So next time you’ll go with me? There’s this place down on the Ginza called Hula Loops and there’s these dancing babes in neon inflatable innertubes that-"

Sage sighed faintly, and dumped the remainder of his soup on Rowen’s head. "Baka."

Rowen pouted soupily. "Is that a no?"

~owari~

And the moral boys and girls, is to WATCH YOUR DRINKS!!!!!!! =)~

by Tenshi no Korin
yoroiden samurai troopers
b i s h o n e n i n k