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Allegedly, they gave Dr. Tenma just enough time to wash his hands and change out of his scrubs and back into his rain-soaked clothes before they put him in handcuffs and herded him into the back of a police car. Upon recovering Dr. Gillen’s car and rushing to the station in the town that Tenma had been flown to by helicopter to perform Johan’s operation, Nina was apprised of the uselessness of their visit; the police had already started the drive to Düsseldorf without a moment’s delay. She and Doctor Gillen immediately set out in pursuit.
Sitting there, in Gillen’s car, soaked to the bone and cold all the way down to her soul, Nina imagined Tenma in the back of the police car, just as soaked and tired as she was, but alone and bound and headed straight for confinement. Alone with his thoughts, his turmoil, that he had again saved the life of the man whom he had set out on a journey to kill. She could feel the same upheaval in herself. She could feel his pain as her own.
With reality crashing into her, Nina bent forward and cried silently into her hands, for herself, for Tenma, for Johan. Gillen reached over and patted her shoulder, said something, and then let her be.
It was a long, silent drive, save for the task of updating those who had gone into hiding on the situation. Nina left this to Gillen. She heard Lotte answer the phone, her voice shaking and high. Gillen soothed her with his identity, and once everyone was gathered around to listen, he launched into recounting the evening’s grisly events. Listening to his calm, smooth voice going over the facts one by one, Nina could almost imagine him hosting a radio crime drama. It all almost seemed fictional.
Her mind went elsewhere. Hours and hours blended. Then she was drifting off to sleep in her own soft hotel bed in Düsseldorf, beginning the wait.
No one was allowed to see him aside from the police and Mr. Verdemann at first. Mr. Verdemann disseminated information to the rest of them somewhat freely, but when Nina asked about Tenma’s condition, he answered only vaguely again and again.
“He’s doing about as well as you can expect for a falsely accused man in his position,” he told her. “But we’re doing all we can.”
She felt like they were all censoring information and opinions for her sake. She understood why, but she felt stronger than she had in a long time - she could take it, and she couldn’t seem to make them understand that.
On the third day of waiting, Nina was fed up with her sparse diet of facts, fed up with not being able to see Tenma, fed up with everything. She went to the police station and demanded to see him. There must have been something in her eyes, or in her voice; the police officer at the front desk went wide-eyed and slack-jawed, and seemed to withdraw from her as if in fear.
“I-I’ll see what I can do, Miss,” he stammered, and ran off. Nina looked around and saw several other officers standing around, each with a variation of the first’s intimidated expression on their faces.
She was so shocked at having her request granted that it seemed as though she blinked, and one instant she was standing there, and the next she was seated in a chair in a small room, which was halved by a desk and a glass window with holes at face level that were too small to pass anything through, but large enough to allow one to speak to someone on the other side. She’d never been in one of these cells before. It was surreal.
Her heart leapt when she heard the opening and closing of a door on the other side, and Tenma stepped into view, taking a seat across from her. His eyes were downcast, his long dark hair shrouding his face.
“Tenma,” she said softly. He looked up.
Nina’s stomach clenched. Dreadful; miserable, did not begin to describe him. The life had gone out of his eyes, which stared uncomprehending, and there were dark circles beneath them; his face was haggard and almost approaching unkempt, with light stubble having begun to emerge. His shoulders sagged low, his spine bent forward under ten thousand invisible burdens. In that moment of seeing him, Nina was frozen with a sense of terrible helplessness.
Then his eyes seemed to actually see her, and recognition sparked behind them. He straightened a little, his eyes widening, lips parted in surprise.
“Tenma,” Nina said again, leaning forward.
“Nina,” he answered, her name seeming to drift out of him. “Why… why are you here?”
For a moment she could only stare at him. “Because I wanted to see you,” she said finally. “How are you doing? Are you okay? They haven’t been treating you badly, have they?”
“It’s so good to see you,” he said very softly, answering none of her questions.
Nina watched him, looked into his eyes, and noticed that they were shaking, drifting back and forth rapidly - a natural movement, microsaccades, that should have been unnoticeable to her under normal circumstances. But she had been a college student long enough to recognize the worst signs of fatigue in other people.
“Have you been getting enough sleep?” she asked.
One side of Tenma’s mouth twitched, and he looked down at his lap. “Well… no.”
“Tenma, listen to me,” Nina pleaded gently, edging closer to the glass window. “You weren’t wrong to save my brother’s life. You did the right thing. Please try not to worry… I…”
Her words drifted off when Tenma shook his head.
“No, it’s... not that.” He spoke slowly, haltingly; he was clearly having to wade through the mud of fatigue to find the words. “There’s… an officer, a young man, who… he’s new to the police force… and convinced that I’m guilty, I killed all those people… he’s setting an alarm every thirty minutes, outside my cell, and depriving me of sleep.”
“That’s horrible,” Nina breathed, appalled. “That’s torture!”
Tenma didn’t answer her, or look at her.
“We have to do something,” she went on. “Have you told Mr. Verdemann about this?”
“...No.”
“But why not?”
Tenma paused. “I don’t… want to trouble him. He has enough to deal with. With... my case.”
Nina wanted to cry. She very nearly did.
“I’ll see what I can do, then,” she said after she gathered herself. “This isn’t right. You don’t deserve to be tortured.”
Tenma was silent for a long time. A sense of dread crept into Nina’s heart.
“Do you think you deserve to be tortured?” she asked with horror. “Tenma…”
He gave a small start and looked up at her. “I’m sorry,” he said, a spark of lucidity shining through, “I can’t… I can’t follow conversations. I’m sorry.” He lifted his hands - both of them, as his wrists were cuffed neatly together - and rubbed his eyes tiredly.
“Tenma…”
Nina reached out and touched the holes in the glass with her fingers without thinking, as if she could slip them through and give him something, some part of her own ability to endure hardship, with a touch. When Tenma saw this, he stared at her hand, and then lifted his own to the glass. Nina imagined that the warmth in their fingertips might travel through, if only they stayed this way long enough.
Tenma sighed heavily. His eyes glazed over and his body shivered with a fit of intense weariness.
“Right now I would give anything to be able to touch you,” he said.
Nina blushed immediately. She knew - she knew that wasn’t what he meant, but the images came to her mind anyway. It didn’t help that, she suddenly admitted to herself, she liked them.
It took a few seconds for Tenma to realize his mistake. “Wait.” He took his hand off of the glass and made clumsy, desperate gestures. “Wait, that’s not… I’m not… what I meant…” He buried his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking. “I’m sorry. My God, I…”
“I know,” Nina said reassuringly, smiling - his shoulders were shaking because he was chuckling. She could see that he was smiling behind his palms. It gladdened her immensely. “What can I do to make that happen?”
“Make what happen?” Tenma shook his head. “Oh. I, um. I don’t know that you can.” He was still smiling a little when he dropped his hands to his lap, looking to the side. “Well, the officer who put me in here… he’s the opposite. He doesn’t think I’m guilty. He’s a good man… If you talked to him…”
“I’ll do it. What does he look like?”
“He’s taller than me… older. He has dark hair, with white streaks, and a moustache. He should be-”
Nina heard the door on the other side of the glass open, and then the very man in question stepped into view. “Time’s up,” he said, lifting Tenma to his feet with a guiding hand on his back. “I’m sorry I can’t give you longer than a couple of minutes, but I’m already breaking the rules letting anyone but Dr. Tenma’s lawyer visit him right now.”
Nina surged to her feet and pressed her hands to the glass.
“Officer, please... please let me see him!”
He looked at her conflictedly. “You’re already seeing him right now.”
“I mean in person,” Nina clarified quickly. “Please, I just… I only want to…”
Tenma’s gaze was fixed upon the floor again. The smile was gone; the pitiful hope in him had already crawled away.
“Please,” Nina repeated. Her eyes brimmed over with tears that she didn’t have to perform.
The officer sighed deeply to himself, then went and took a peek outside the cell, down both ends of the hallway.
“Alright,” he said finally. She and Tenma both gave a start. “But we have to be quick, understand? Wait for me outside.”
“Thank you!” Nina called quietly after him as he rushed Tenma out of the cell.
A few moments later the officer came hurrying down the hall, gesturing for her to follow. He led her around a corner and opened the door for her into a tiny, cold interrogation room, where Tenma stood waiting. As soon as he saw her, his face lit up.
“Nina,” he breathed, and Nina ran two steps forward and threw her arms around him, hugging him almost as tightly as she could. Tenma rested his head on her shoulder, leaning into her; he couldn’t return her embrace with his hands cuffed, but he still did his best to be close to her.
The officer shut the door behind him. “I’m sorry, I can’t uncuff him, and I can’t leave you alone with him. I’m already breaking enough rules as it is. You don’t have very long, either.”
Nina turned her head to reply so her voice wouldn’t be muffled against Tenma’s shirt. “I understand. Thank you so much.” Then she buried her face against him again, and tried not to cry.
“This is all I need,” Tenma said in almost a whisper. His words echoed repeatedly in Nina’s mind. She held him tighter.
For what seemed like a long time they just stood there that way. The officer was respectfully silent, and out of the corner of her eye Nina could see that he was also averting his eyes, giving them as much privacy as he could without violating his constraints. Gradually Nina calmed, and finally she was able to pry her arms away and withdraw, but she didn’t step back. Instead, she tucked some of Tenma’s hair behind his ear and took his face in her hands, freezing her own chest with emotion. Tenma closed his eyes.
“Stay strong, okay?” Nina said. Tenma nodded. When she moved one hand and leaned in, and kissed him lightly on the cheek, his eyes snapped open, and he stared at her in shock.
Nina turned away from him before he could see the faint color in her cheeks. She held Tenma’s arm and turned to the police officer with a smile.
“Thank you,” she said again. The officer nodded cordially to her and stepped forward to take Tenma out of her custody.
“Remember, not a word about this to anyone,” he said, leading Tenma to the door. “Both of you.”
They nodded.
“Wait,” Nina said suddenly, stopping him.
He turned back to her and regarded her with worry and exasperation, but asked politely, “What is it?”
“Tenma, have you told him about the alarm clock?”
“Oh, you mean that clock that the newbie put by your cell? What about it?”
Tenma grimaced and elaborated. The officer received his explanation with an increasingly appalled expression.
“That’s unconscionable,” he said at last, when Tenma was done. “When you told me about it I thought you meant he was just being a nuisance, waking you up a few hours before all the other inmates in the mornings. I didn’t know it had progressed to something like this.” The officer gnashed his teeth, and Nina got the feeling that there was some prior history contributing to this mounting anger. “That alarm clock is getting smashed, and I swear, the next time I see that guy, he’s getting a piece of my mind. It won’t be the first time. Well, I have seniority.”
She smiled. “Thank you,” she said again. Tenma nodded his thanks as well. “Please take care of him, officer.”
“I try to take care of all of my inmates,” he responded, “whether I think they’re guilty or not.”
The officer exited the room last, and finally began to lead Tenma the opposite way down the hall, deeper into the jail. The last expression she saw on Tenma’s face before he was turned completely away from her was a gentle smile, a tiny flame of happiness. They turned the corner, and they were gone.
Mostly. “If I had to guess, I’d say you two are lovers,” said the officer, his voice getting further away.
“No,” Tenma corrected him softly. “We’re close, but… it’s not like that. She’s the twin sister of Johan… the man in my case.”
“Wait, really?” The officer sighed deeply. “Oh, God. You really can’t say a word about this to anyone. If someone finds out that I let a big person of interest in your case meet with you, I’ll be up to here in it. Seniority won’t matter at all, then.”
Whatever else they had to say was lost behind the closing of a door. Nina, smiling and feeling warm and better, turned and headed out.