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The call ended and Ren set the phone down.
He stood in the clinic for a moment, looking at nothing in particular.
Twenty minutes, he thought. She said twenty minutes.
He looked at his hands. Void-black skin, the ten blood-red tentacles currently retracted, the plain white mask across his face. He checked the wall clock. He had been in combat form since before dawn yesterday. Nearly forty hours.
He had not thought about this until this exact moment.
She's going to see—
He took a breath.
The mask was not the problem. Rhea had seen his face. She had seen a lot of things about him that would take other people considerably longer to accept. But the void-black skin, the tentacles, the overall impression of an eldritch entity wearing a doctor's coat: that was a different conversation than the one they had on a convenience store step.
He focused.
The transformation back to his human appearance was not difficult. It was a release of maintained form, the eldritch expression drawing back beneath the surface until what remained was the face she knew: dark hair, ordinary hands. The mask did not vanish. It sank, pressing inward, settling beneath the skin until it was present but not visible, a layer under the features rather than a surface over them.
"Ren."
"What."
"You've been staring at your own reflection for forty-five seconds."
"I'm not staring at my reflection."
"You adjusted your collar twice. You don't have a collar."
Ren looked down. He was indeed holding the lapel of his coat, which did not have a collar.
"She's seen your face, Ren. She knows you're not normal. She said it to your face and stayed anyway. What exactly are you nervous about?"
"I'm not nervous."
"You checked the clock four times in the last three minutes."
"I was tracking time."
"Ren."
"What."
"Go downstairs."
He let go of the lapel.
He turned off the treatment room light and locked the supply cabinet by habit.
Then he stood there again.
What do I say to her.
He did not have an answer to this, which was unusual. He generally had a structure for conversations, an entry point and an anticipated range of directions. With Rhea the anticipated range had always been wide, but tonight he had no entry at all. She had cried. She had said she could not forgive herself if something happened to him. She had said she was coming.
He had said okay.
He took the elevator down to the ground floor.
. . .
The Dao Guild's main entrance at this hour was quiet. A few hunters on overnight assignments moving through the lobby, two staff members at the reception desk, the usual ambient hum of a large building doing its nighttime operations.
Ren walked out through the main doors and stood on the front steps.
The street outside was lit and ordinary. The city beyond was still going, two districts visible from street level: one ordinary and lit, the other still bearing the cleanup's edges, scaffolding on two of the closer buildings.
He checked the time.
Eighteen minutes.
He lit a cigarette.
One of the overnight hunters coming out of the building behind him paused on the step.
"Doctor. Still here?"
"Waiting for someone."
The hunter looked at him for a moment, then let it go.
"Good luck," he said, and kept walking.
Ren watched him go.
Good luck, he thought. For what specifically.
He had smoked about half of the cigarette when he heard footsteps coming fast on the pavement to his left.
He turned.
Rhea Jensen came around the corner at something approaching a run, white short-sleeve dress, the angel tattoo on her lower arm visible in the streetlight, her short black hair moving with her pace. She had clearly left wherever she was the moment the call ended and had not slowed down since.
She saw him.
Her stride did not change for the first two steps. Then her face changed, and she was running.
She ran straight at him.
He had time to register this and approximately no time to prepare for it.
She hit him with both arms going around him at chest height, her full weight behind it, and Ren went down the two front steps and landed on the pavement with Rhea still attached.
He lay on his back on the cold stone in front of the Dao Guild building and looked at the sky.
Rhea had her arms around him and her face pressed against his chest. She was crying with nothing of performance in it, the kind that happened when a body had held something for seventeen hours and was now releasing it all at once.
He lay there, not sure what to do with his arms.
This is, he thought, an unexpected development.
She was saying something into his coat, muffled, and he caught fragments: mister and scared and you idiot.
He exhaled.
He raised one arm and wrapped it around her. Then the other. He felt her shoulders shake. He patted her head once, twice, not knowing if this was the right response but committing to it.
"I'm here," he said.
She held on tighter.
"You idiot," she said, muffled against his coat.
"Yes."
"You absolute idiot."
"I know."
She didn't say anything after that for a while. Just held on. He kept his arms around her, looked at the sky, and let her go at whatever pace she needed.
After a moment she said, quieter now: "I was so scared."
"I know," he said.
"Don't do that again."
"I'll set up—"
"I don't care about a system." She pulled back just enough to look at him, eyes red, not bothering to hide it. "Just tell me you're alive. That's all. Two words."
He looked at her.
"Two words," he said.
She held his gaze, then pressed her face back against his coat.
He patted her head again.
He looked at the sky above the Dao Guild building. Clear tonight, which felt like something that had not earned the right to be.
. . .
Behind the left corner of the building, pressed flat against the wall, three figures stood with hotdogs.
Henry Hess took a bite of his. He was watching around the corner.
"I never expected this," he said. "We just came out for dinner."
"She tackled him," Hans said. He was grinning. "She full-on tackled the Doctor."
"He went down," Henry said, with great respect. "That's an S-rank hunter. Dropped by one girl."
Irene had her hotdog raised halfway to her mouth, frozen there, staring.
"How," she said.
"Love," Henry said sagely.
"That's not what I—" She turned to look at him. "He has tentacles. Like, actual tentacles. I have seen the tentacles. How does anyone look at the tentacles and go yes, that's the one?"
"The heart," Henry said, "wants what the heart wants."
"His tentacles held a chainsaw puppy."
"And yet."
"Henry," Irene said. "I am being serious."
"So am I." Henry finished his hotdog in one enormous bite and chewed thoughtfully. "The Doctor is a fascinating individual. Clearly someone agrees."
Hans was trying not to laugh and failing completely.
"She knocked him over," Hans said again. "She just ran directly at him and he went down."
"He let her," Henry said.
"He absolutely did not have time to—"
"He let her," Henry repeated, certain.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
All three of them flinched.
Chu Xinghe stood behind them. He had knocked all three of them on the head in sequence with the flat of two fingers, each knock clean and deliberate.
"What," he said, "are the three of you doing."
"Vice Guildmaster—"
"Looking at people," Irene said.
"In private moments," Chu said. "It's unsightly."
"To be fair," Henry started.
"It's unsightly," Chu said again, with the same pleasant tone that left no room for argument. "Whatever is happening out there is not for us to observe. Go back inside."
"Yes, Vice Guildmaster."
"Of course."
Irene looked at the corner, then at Chu.
"They're going back in," she said. "To the clinic. I can see them from here."
Chu Xinghe looked at the corner.
Henry looked at Chu.
Hans looked at Henry.
There they were, Chu thought, watching them move toward the entrance. The Doctor held the door. Seventeen hours of news coverage, and she ran here. And he stood on the steps waiting.
That means something.
He became aware that he had been standing at the corner for approximately fifteen seconds looking.
"What are you waiting for?" he said, turning back. "Go."
He walked to the other elevator at a pace that was, objectively speaking, slightly faster than necessary.
Behind him, Henry, Hans, and Irene stood with their mouths open.
"He lectured us," Hans said.
"And then sprinted to the other elevator," Henry said.
"He did not sprint," Irene said.
"It was a fast walk," Henry said. "A very fast walk."
"SHAMELESS!" the three of them said, more or less at the same time, in the direction of the already-closing elevator doors.
They looked at each other.
"Well," Henry said.
"We're going," Hans said.
"Obviously," Irene said.
They went.