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Johan Liebert has become something smaller than a shell. Something emptier.
Tenma has dealt with shells before. He’s both a human being and a doctor, so he knows that fixing something does not give it life. The same way he knew that the bullet he extracted from Johan’s head had not ablated the memories that haunt him now that he’s awake again.
Johan hasn’t said a word since he awoke a month ago. Nothing at all. In the times where Tenma managed to catch a glimpse of him, he carried himself around to the bathroom and back as if his body is a burden, a weight too heavy. His shoulders slumped, sagging like the corners of his lips and the droop of his soulless eyes.
When he first opened them– his eyes– Tenma had spoken to him and gotten a deafening silence in return. Nothing to indicate that Johan heard him at all. Tenma started wondering if the bullet had damaged his auditory cortex. Cortical deafness was a rare thing, but not impossible. And. Well. Almost everything Johan has experienced so far was rare.
Tenma gave him time. On day four, he opened the blinds in the room that used to be his and said Good morning. Johan stared, unblinking, at the ceiling, his fingers intertwined on his stomach. Tenma didn’t push. He didn’t like pushing.
However, Johan was still human. Hunger forced him out of bed every few days, but never when Tenma was awake. There was always a plate for him.
There were subtle signs of life scattered around the day. A weak pulse that stilled under any acknowledgement from the doctor. The faint creak of the floorboards at night. The flush of the toilet. The way Johan's slippers changed direction every day. And—
And the rise and fall of his chest. Infrequent. There. Forced.
Tenma knows Johan’s suicide will happen sooner or later - he sees it in the way he holds his breath like he loathes living inside his skin alongside a beating heart - and another thing he knows is that he’ll do everything in his power to prevent it.
…
On day thirty two, Tenma decides it’s enough.
The first person he invites over is Nina.
One thing he knew is that she’s Johan’s weakness. She might be the only person capable of tugging a word out of him. Maybe even a smile.
Nina sits at his bedside and talks about her day. She speaks softly, not like she does with everyone else. She speaks to her brother like she’s scared he'll crack and crumble under her voice.
She talks about Tenma. And she talks about Dieter. And she talks about her graduation and friends. She talks to him like he’s her diary.
Johan listens.
Tenma leaves to buy ingredients for lunch. When he comes back, he can hear the distinct murmur of Nina reading to Johan. He doesn’t interrupt as he stirs the sauce on the stove.
It’s hours into the evening that he goes in to check on the pair. Nina’s hand is clasped around Johan’s limp one, her forehead resting atop it. It takes Tenma a moment to note the rhythm of her breathing.
He walks over to her and places a gentle hand on her shoulder, half-startling her upright. “You should have something to eat and get proper rest,” he tells her.
“But Johan…”
“Johan will be here when you wake up,” Tenma responds, and his eyes lift to the boy in question. “Right, Johan?”
He says here, and he means alive.
A pause. A heartbeat. Nina looks on, waiting with bated breath for any sign that her brother can hear her.
Johan blinks once. It isn’t a smile nor a word but—
It’s enough.
…
Nightmares are frequent. They crawl out of Johan’s mouth every night, the only sounds Tenma has heard from him since he woke up from his coma.
He never interrupts them. He lies on the couch silently and waits them out.
Eventually, he invites Dr. Reichwein after the doctor calls him to scold him for not informing him that Johan is awake.
Tenma thinks he might do Johan some good.
He also knows how persistent the therapist can be, so he doesn’t give them the privacy he gave the twins. He stands just outside the room and listens.
Listens to Dr. Reichwein start by telling Johan what he had for breakfast. He goes too much into detail then the topic escalates to praising Tenma’s cooking before the one-sided conversation lands where he wants it to.
“Are you having nightmares?” Dr. Reichwein asks. “I’m sure you are if you aren’t eating well. According to Tenma, you’re practically living a vegetable existence.”
Tenma finds himself facepalming.
“I know that man can be a nuisance, but he means well.”
Silence.
“He reminds me of a friend I have-” pause. “Had. He’s dead now. Natural causes. He was also very intelligent, just like Dr. Tenma. And just like Dr. Tenma, he carried his heart on his sleeve. Which made him a bit of a fool. Maybe that’s why he died so young. When people are too busy looking outside and trying to protect those around them…”
Tenma hunches his shoulders. Curls in on himself as if the two people in that room aren’t the two people who know him the most.
Momentarily, he feels like an outsider in his own body, a voyeur to his own feelings. Why does it feel like he’s been kept in the dark?
He turns around and leaves to the bathroom where he splashes his face with cold water. He looks in the mirror. Blinks at the face that looks back at him.
He needs a haircut. And a shave. And maybe a nap.
“Ah, there you are,” Dr. Reichwein says when Tenma steps out. “I’m going to go now.”
“Huh? Wait. Doctor Reichwein. How is he?”
“It’s hard to say. He didn’t say a word. Progress takes time, he'll come around.”
“What do I do until then?”
“You’ll figure it out,“ Dr. Reichwein pats Tenma on the arm. “Let’s have some tea tomorrow.”
Tenma ruffles the back of his head. “Alright.”
The door closes behind Dr. Reichwein. Tenma lumbers into Johan’s room. He stands in the doorway. Lingers for a minute. Sighs defeatedly.
“I’m going to the hospital,” he says. “Have breakfast while I’m gone.”
Johan doesn’t have breakfast, but at least he has tea, if the small spoon Tenma finds in the sugar pot is any indicator.
It’s enough for now.
…
Tenma doesn’t invite Eva. Eva doesn’t need to be invited; she invites herself.
The knock at his door is long and tuneful, and Tenma doesn’t have to tell her to come in either. She presses a bag of delicious-smelling food to his chest and pushes past him.
“I knew you’d be working yourself to the bone again,” she says in lieu of a greeting. “So I got you dinner. Aren’t I just the best? Don’t you regret turning me down yet?”
“Uh. Thank you?” Tenma replies, uncertain.
She doesn’t stop in the living room. She goes all the way into the room Johan is lying in.
Tenma rushes after her. “Wait! Eva, don’t–”
“Spare me,” Eva lifts a hand in the air to silence him. “You’ve always been way too kind for your own good, Tenma.”
Then, addressing Johan, “Get up.”
Johan blinks. He’s been doing that more frequently lately. Tenma’s glad.
“I said,” Eva steps in and curls a ringed hand around the top of the duvet Johan’s dying under. With one swift move, she flings it off him. “Get up.”
“What are you doing?!” Tenma exclaims.
He puts the bag down on the chair beside Johan’s bed to step in, but Eva elbows him away from her.
“Do you know something, kid? The one thing I hate more than the stench of a perfume dupe is a pathetic man hiding behind–”
“Eva!”
“And I despise being interrupted,” Eva aims a glare over her shoulder at her ex fiancé. “Let me speak to Johan.”
Tenma looks between her and Johan for a few moments. Deeming the situation safe – as Eva’s always been strong. She can handle herself – he takes a step back.
“And take dinner with you. Three plates.”
And three plates it is.
Less than ten minutes later, Johan is sitting at the table. Eva sits opposite him, and Tenma stands a few feet away, eyes wide with confusion.
“How—”
How?
Johan looks as lifeless as he does in bed, hair matted, insomnia ringing his tired eyes, but he’s sitting at the table, and he’s eating. And. Well. That’s enough.
“Join us, Tenma,” Eva says in that smug tone of hers.
…
Now that his streak is broken, Johan starts leaving bed more. He still waits for Tenma to go to sleep before he has lunch, and he refuses to say a word, but it’s improvement.
Nina comes around and talks to him almost every day. She brings Dieter with her once. He attempts to get a reaction out of Johan by throwing his soccer ball at him. It hits him square in the head and has Dieter blurting an alarmed apology. Nina bursts out laughing.
Johan doesn’t react.
It’s two nights later that Tenma starts out of a nightmare of his own with a choked out breath. He sits up and looks around the living room, grasping for a string of reality.
The string of reality he finds is the sleepless form making its trek to the kitchen for late lunch.
Johan’s still, his eyes on the older man. Tenma hangs his feet off the couch and runs his fingers through his sweat-damp hair.
He needs a haircut.
Johan hasn’t moved. Hasn’t retreated to his room nor finished his journey to the kitchen.
Tenma takes a deep, grounding breath.
“Couldn’t sleep either, huh?” he asks, his voice gritty with exhaustion.
The echoing silence is a yawning chasm between them. It’s loud and overwhelming and– and–
“Do you dream of me often, doctor?”
Tenma’s head snaps up, his eyes wide as they seek out the younger man to make sure he’s there at all. That his mind isn’t playing tricks on him.
Johan’s there. Unmoving. His posture is as tired as his voice. His voice that had always been smooth; a conniving, velvety thing that he wielded like a weapon. A means of opening and operating, sharper than any of Tenma’s scalpels could ever be.
It’s nothing now. It’s a rasp of words and it lands flat on its face.
It’s not a teasing question. It isn’t smug. It’s— a question. That’s all it is.
“I dream of me too,” Johan tells him. Then slinks back into the darkness of his room, his next words trailing behind him. “What torment that is.”
Tenma collects himself with a breath. He rakes his fingers through his hair again and then he follows the younger man. Sits at his bedside and stares at his silhouette in the dark.
“Before I,” he stops and clears his throat as if he’s the one who hasn’t spoken in months. “Before they brought you in as a child, there was a—”
He wets his throat, rubbing his thumb into the palm of his opposite hand.
“There was a man who I was supposed to operate on,” he continues. “A Turkish man whose wife cornered me and wept for.”
Johan says nothing.
“It was a long time ago but I still regret it,” Tenma explains. “I should’ve operated on him. Maybe he would still be alive.”
Maybe he would still be alive somehow feels easier to say than maybe he wouldn’t be dead.
Johan breathes.
“You were my penance.”
Johan stops breathing.
“You have to know I don’t regret what I did that day,” emotion silts the confession, almost cracking its sound. “Not for a second. I have never regretted saving you—”
Johan. Johan. That’s the name he uses. But the name that spills from Tenma’s mouth isn’t the one he goes by. It snatches a small sound out of the younger man.
Tenma makes amends, covering the miswording.
“I would do it again. I have— I have done it again. And you have the chance to start over. As long as you’re breathing, you can start over."
Johan. His name is Johan. But the slip of the tongue has eaten the letters out of Tenma’s throat. He can’t bring himself to call him by that name anymore.
Silence. Complete silence. The tremble of Tenma’s next breath carries into the soft exhale of Johan's.
They sit in the aftermath for a long time until they’re breathing as one. Soft breath for soft breath.
Just. Existing.