Cap sat by Yuri’s bed, watching her sleep. Her chest rose and fell, her breathing shallow but steady. He glanced out of the window. The morning sun shone through it, but he couldn’t remember how long ago night had given way to day.

    He couldn’t remember the last time he had slept.

    A group of doctors and medical students came in and did their rounds, taking a blood sample and checking her vitals. And then he was alone with her again.

    A memory flashed through his mind. A different woman he loved in a different age, sitting on a hospital bed in the emergency ward, wincing as a young doctor stitched up a gash on her cheek. An engagement ring burning a hole in his pocket.

    Janey had given him a smile, her expression far less concerned than his had been. “We’ll get through this,” she had said.

    When he got home later that night he had locked the engagement ring into a drawer.

    Yuri stirred, but didn’t wake.

    Another memory. Another hospital bed, decades later, this time in palliative care. Janey, smiling at him serenely, somehow content with a life not lived and a family never started. Doctors and nurses quietly talking about a new nuclear arms treaty and Skylab in the hallway.

    “You need to find somebody to love when I’m gone,” Janey had said.

    “I will,” Cap had lied. How could I ever love anybody other than you?

    Janey just smiled, her eyes mischievous. “Liar.” Then she had become earnest. “Matt, you can’t let your life become any more empty. Promise me that you’ll at least find another foursome to play golf with.”

    Cap had held her hand then, somehow holding back his tears. “I will,” he promised. The only promise to her he would never keep.

    Janey had passed later that day, as he watched. After they wheeled her out of the room, making room for whoever would be next, he had headed home in a stupor. He unlocked a certain drawer and opened it, staring at the ring he hadn’t seen since that day in the hospital emergency ward. Then he closed and locked it again.

    Janey’s last day...and the last day of Matthew Markham. The day that ‘Matthew Markham’ became a pair of words that he used to sign documents, and nothing more.

    “How’s she doing?” a voice said, snapping him back to the present. He turned to see Sayori and Yukari standing in the doorway.

    “About the same,” Cap replied. “You can come in, if you want.”

    The two came into the room and stood beside him. For a moment, they watched Yuri sleep in silence. Then Yukari said, “It wasn’t supposed to be her.”

    Cap blinked. “What do you mean?”

    “Back on that world Aquila created for us as a refuge, we had a meeting,” Yukari explained. “We talked about how we needed to stop being passengers, and I said that I would be okay with one of us getting hurt or killed if it meant the rest of us made it out alive.” She sighed. “But I wasn’t talking about her...I never wanted it to be her.”

    Sayori put a comforting hand on Yukari’s shoulder. “You were talking about yourself.”

    Yukari nodded. “After all the rest of you have done for me, it was the least I could do to repay you. Knowing that you would be able to live long and happy lives would be enough for me, if it meant that I had to stay behind and sacrifice myself.” She wiped a tear from her eye. “But I never thought it would be anybody other than me.”

    “Even if we thought you owed us anything,” Sayori said, “we would never want it to be repaid like that.”

    “It wouldn’t have mattered anyway,” Cap said. “The battlefield is never that simple or organized. You never know who’s going to get hit, not really.”

    “How are you doing?” Sayori asked Cap.

    Cap shook his head. “I...I don’t know.”

    They watched Yuri in silence for another few moments.

    “She actually woke up for a minute a few hours ago,” Cap said, breaking the silence. “The doctors were worried when she didn’t come out of the anesthetic as quickly as they thought she should – they thought she might have slipped into a post-operative coma. But, then they realized that she had just fallen asleep after the surgery. I guess...I guess she didn’t sleep very well a couple of nights ago.”

    “None of us did,” Sayori said.

    “So, what are you two going to do?” Cap asked.

    “Probably hang around here,” Yukari said. “The cool scary lady is interrogating Natsuki all day–”

    “She’s got a name,” Sayori pointed out. “And it’s not an interrogation...it’s called a ‘debriefing’.”

    Yukari grinned. “Fine. The cool scary lady with a name is grilling Natsuki over the coals all day about what happened at Balthazar’s base, and we’ve got nothing to do. So, we may as well stick around here.”

    “Huh,” Cap mused. “I thought she was resigning.”

    “Somebody must have talked her out of it,” Sayori said. “She was still there when we got up this morning.”

    “And how is Natsuki?” Cap said.

    Sayori frowned. “Rattled. Very badly. But, she’ll get through it.”

    “She’s got all of us,” Yukari said. “We’ve got plenty of experience helping each other get through things.”

    Cap nodded. “Good.”

    Sayori checked her watch. “We should go get something to eat, and then check in on Aquila. Perhaps she’ll be awake by then...not that Kasumi is unpleasant to talk to or anything.”

    Yukari blinked. “Oh, we need to tell him about the thing.”

    “Right,” Sayori said. “They’re apparently going to be issuing us the documents we need to live in this world while we’re here. So, somebody is going to be coming by tomorrow to collect both of your information.”

    “Don’t know what we’re going to do about home addresses,” Yukari said. “Do ours even exist in this Japan?”

    Sayori shrugged. “Just use the base address, I guess. Anyway, we should get something to eat, Yukari. You take care, Cap.”

    Cap nodded, and watched them head out into the hallway. Then he took one more look at Yuri, his gaze falling on the engagement ring on her finger. He blinked, his eyelids suddenly feeling very heavy.

    He rested his head on the mattress of Yuri’s hospital bed, and finally fell into a slumber.

Cap awoke to feel somebody stroking his hair. He looked up to see Yuri smiling as she watched him.

    “I thought you would never wake up,” she said, her voice thready. “You slept through Sayori and Yukari visiting me.”

    Cap sat up and took Yuri’s hand. “I’m sorry...I’m sorry I didn’t protect you. If I had known you were there, I would have–”

    “If you had known I was there, you would have protected me instead of Aquila,” Yuri said. “That’s why I made Atria promise not to tell you I was coming. It was my decision.”

    “And it put you in here,” Cap stated. “I never wanted you to have to go through this. I don’t...I don’t...I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

    “Oh, my love,” Yuri said, her eyes sad, “I wish you would stop being so afraid.”

    Cap gave her the bravest smile he could manage. “I’m not afraid. I’m never afraid. I’m bulletproof, remember?”

    Yuri sighed. “Yes you are. You’re terrified of what will happen if you take Aquila up on her offer – you’re afraid of letting go of the superhero.”

    Cap paused. “You heard that.”

    Yuri nodded, her movements slow. “I have good hearing too. I overheard everything.”

    “Yuri...if I let Aquila de-power me, how will I ever be able to protect you? How will I stop something like this from happening again?”

    Yuri squeezed his hand, but there was little strength. “I don’t need you to protect me, my love. I need you to walk alongside me. I need you to share my life with me, and grow old with me.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “I don’t want you to be my superhero...I want you to be my husband. I want us to cook dinners together, and go on walks, and watch our children grow. Aquila can give us that, but you need to be brave...brave like you’ve never had to be before.”

    Cap pressed her hand to his lips. “I love you,” he said. “I am going to marry you.”

    Yuri smiled. “Good. I liked being called your fiancee.” She took a deep breath. If it hurt, she didn’t show it. “Now where’s Aquila? I don’t want to have to wait.”

    Cap stared at their hands clasped together. “She was hit right after you were. She’s in a room down the hall, I think.”

    Yuri winced. “Right. Sayori and Yukari had said something about that. Blame the painkillers.” She sighed. “It really did go wrong, didn’t it?”

    “About as wrong as it could,” Cap replied. “Now we’re stuck here waiting for a miracle so the world doesn’t end.”

    Yuri smiled. “Miracles seem to happen a lot around us. I think we can have some hope.” She glanced at the doorway, and then raised her hand, showing off the engagement ring. “It’s real now,” she declared.

    “Took bloody long enough,” Sayori said from the doorway. Beside her, Yukari stood, grinning.

NEXT: “Laboratory”