2026-07-25: Honour in the Dark
- Log: Honour in the Dark
- Cast: Yua Ijuuin, Miho Ijuuin, Tyrrha Ijuuin
- Where: Aoba General Hospital
- OOC Date: 2026-07-25
- IC Date: Fri, Dec 14 2012 (Dark Hour)
- Summary: Yua and Miho get Tyrrha home safely -- and it's only then that Yua lets Miho whisk her off to hospital, as she promised Remi she would. It's late enough that the Dark Hour sets in once they've secured a bed for her treatment... and so Miho attends to her wife, hearing her theories about the deeper workings of the Dragon Lines and her concerns over Tyrrha. It's the latter which lead her to sharing her plans to learn more about the girl's mysterious condition with Miho, though... going where Miho's requests for intel can't, by plying Natari for the truth when she's vulnerable. It's something which leads her to face what she's threatened by, now the Blacksite has called Tyrrha back to check on her... and Yua shares some more of her grief with Miho, alongside her determination to fight. Miho helps to steady her, though, with her own determination: that Tyrrha is their daughter, because they chose her, and so they'll keep her safe no matter what.
- Content warning: References to domestic violence, discussion of sexual assault and corrective rape, discussion of medical abuse, minor references to military sexual assault, racism.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
When they are fleeing a created space, Yua usually routes them through Mementos; so, then, did they end up in the entrance there, as they stripped their armor and stowed it away to take home from the bus station right outside.
... someone had to all but carry Yua back up to the penthouse.
And wipe the blood from Tyrrha's lips.
She was quite attached to Tyrrha, when they got back, assuring her that she wouldn't let anything happen to her and it's going to be okay, ucha. Tyrrha, in turn, was disappointed when Miho insisted that Welwetes sleep outside... but he wasn't called a weapons array, during that unit meltdown.
The only thing that separated her from embracing the poor girl, laying kisses upon her forehead and rocking her gently, was a phone call --
And one side sounds like this.
"Good evening, Kimi-san."
"... they know?"
"Mm."
"But... she's coming back?"
"If you can't tell me she's coming back--!"
"... I did do that. So... mm, you're right."
"... okay. Can... can it wait a day or two?"
"We'll keep her out of trouble... they won't need to worry."
"Don't worry. I'll... be okay, this time. Really."
"Mm, really, I'm fine... thanks."
"Yeah... bye."
Perhaps Miho can imagine the other, Kimitake forced to bear bad news as Revelation comes calling.
When Tyrrha gamely asked her if it was time for a new model, after she sat back down, Yua fiercely insisted she wasn't going to let that happen.
... and she didn't insist on her daughter's bedtime, tonight, because she at least is thinking of the way Tyrrha might feel being placed on standby.
(Tyrrha doesn't have feelings in quite that same way, which means there's plenty of room for Miho to make suggestions... but she sure does have feelings, huh?)
Only after she was safely charging did Yua endure anything more than bandaging her wrist; money, it happens, buys a great many things, including emergency nighttime review. They do have to go to the emergency room rather than their clinic, though, at this hour, and so Yua is beside herself -- both in suffering and in dissociation -- hand gripping Miho's like a vice the whole way through.
It's late enough that they easily slip into the Dark Hour... and luckily, they do that when Yua's been found a bed. There'll be no more adjusting the headrest, for a while, but she's already arranged so that she can hold Miho's hand as she sits beside her.
A coffin overshadows them. A nurse was just coming in to check her vitals...
"... Mimi," Yua murmurs, when she realises the impact of that oppressive green, looking to her as if she'd lost her.
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
Miho carried Yua. She was less hurt by the battle; it only made sense for her to do so instead of Remi, though she assuredly had to convince Remi very hard to let her take care of it. ...It may have been that she said that Remi should prepare for battle just in case that did it. Miho also wiped the blood from Tyrrha's lips. And indeed...
Welwetes is not only a weapons array. Miho resisted the urge to destroy the thing.
A phone call...
Miho can indeed imagine the other side. But Tyrrha asks, and Yua won't let it happen. No, Miho suggested... "Just rest," she says. "I'll see to Yua, and we'll all be together again after that."
Now, though...
The Dark Hour is here, and Miho is holding Yua's hand as well. The coffin nearby is unsettling, unpleasant, but--
"Yua," she says quietly, urgently. "Are you here with me?"
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
Tyrrha would be upset if Miho put her pet down!
(Most pets don't have cameras where their eyes should be, though...)
Indeed, though, Tyrrha rested...
... and Yua's blood pressure has seen better days, according to the number that was on the machine before the Dark Hour cut in. The cuff's still around her far arm, thankfully deflated; her attention flicks to it, distress flickering over her eye, before Miho's voice calls her back to her.
"I don't like it here," she says, her voice thin. "Men in white coats..."
They're running tests.
... and there's more of them upcoming, too. She has to go and get a glucose screening test, soon... but of course anything called a test is something which Yua needs a week and a crash team to survive, so she hasn't completed it yet.
"It's quiet, now," Yua says.
"But the doors fail safe for them..."
They need power to open, she means.
... she's not talking about the door on hinges, leading to the private room her Ijuuin wealth has given her.
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
She would. It wouldn't be nice. So Miho doesn't!
And Yua...
"I know," Miho says gently. "But you need the medical attention. You did what you did for good reasons," she says, though it galls her because it injured her, "But your body requires mending."
So many tests; Miho will be here for her during them, but...
But now it's quiet.
"They do," Miho agrees quietly. "... I am frustrated," she admits. "I could not protect you from this..."
"And I could only gather a third of the power I hoped."
"And Tyrrha, too, suffered..." That bothers her. "It's good that you could save her, but..."
"To see you so bloody, it distressed me."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"It must be done," Yua insists, but quietly.
Perhaps she's talking about the medical attention.
(She isn't talking about the medical attention.)
"I could not keep them from you," Yua says, with regret. "Next time... I'll have to try harder."
She looks to her cuff, again. "Nn," she hums, with discontent. "I don't like it!" She never likes it.
Her gaze drops, though, from cuff to wrist, now properly dressed with a clear dressing. They asked if it was self-inflicted. Yua agreed that it was; Miho had a lot of explaining to do, after that.
"... she recognised me by sampling my blood," Yua explains, quietly. "That's why I knew... there was only one way to call her back."
For another moment, she is quiet.
"... they want to take her back here," and Yua must not mean here, this hospital with normal medicine, but to that other place with sterile white walls. "They'll expect me to escort her... but if I'm the one who stopped her from failing, they won't take her away, right?" Her hand tightens, a little. "And now I'm working out here... they can't keep me there, right?"
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
It must be done, Yua says, and Miho cannot be certain what she means--only what she does not mean. The medical attention too though... it must be.
"There was no way to," Miho disagrees. "The location was unfortunate. The timing, inauspicious. And the fact that we had to work so hard to make it manifest... I don't know what that means."
But, "I know." She doesn't like it.
Miho was able to explain, at least; self-inflicted doesn't have to mean intentional, after all. And moneyed personages have a way of making certain questions disappear...
But Yua explains it. "I see."
"...She's become important to us," Miho says. "More than just an obligation, by far."
She shakes her head. Then...
"I don't know," Miho admits. "But if she is stable, it would serve them nothing to keep her. If you can keep her functioning, that suits their purposes more."
"...And ours," she says. "But no. They cannot keep you there."
"If they tried, I would come for you once more. I promise you that. And this time, i would not stop the demons feasting on their scientists."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"It's exactly because people were living their normal lives, Mimi," Yua says, with a little shake of her head. "The Dragon Line at Stonehenge, and the Dragon Line at Tamagusuku Castle... these were placed at nexuses of spiritual power which even normal people can feel. Because it was a place where the Gods spoke to them, it was a place you could unearth without more effort than the strength Faust gives you. But..."
Miho's fey companion frowns, as she trails the path between their hands to find her eyes again. "Akihabara... it is not a spiritual place in this way. It is a modern Mecca, filled with the technology of men. With normal people, who live normal lives... the potential of the Dragon Line was so faint. Even so, you wondered why no one found it before us, right?" Yua asks, tilting her head. "But when I looked at it through Gretchen's eyes, I realised... it's only because you'd prayed to the Moon and Scarlet Dragons that you were able to recognise the call of the Purple Dragon, Mimi. Hidden in places where people live their normal lives... the Dragon Lines are buried deep beneath the earth of our reality."
She turns her gaze forward, as she says: "We should be careful... the Purple Dragon's power was still seething, when we left. If they're very sensitive... they might learn the shape of it. If someone else were to recognise one before you did... you said you had to prove yourself worthy, right?" She pauses, delicately. "... even some of those children are worthy," is how she says it.
She has been keeping an eye on Yukari, amongst others.
They could cause them a lot of trouble...
Yua, of course, could cause a lot of trouble herself, except that money makes everything better.
"Can't I take it off?" Yua asks, of her cuff, a touch whining. "She won't even notice!" That much, at least, is true; people have a striking capacity to write off strange errors in positioning resulting from the Dark Hour... unless, of course, they're close to Awakening.
But Miho realises how important Tyrrha is, and Yua nods. "When... when I felt that pain, I... I couldn't let her get hurt, Mimi. I promised I'd take care of her... what mama would I be, if I let her -- ohhh, I don't even know what that awful thing was saying -- blow up?!" It probably would have been more violent than blowing up.
... she doesn't know what it was saying.
But Miho reassures her, and Yua clasps her hand, tightly. "You promise," she echoes, looking to her. "Mm... okay, Mimi. You won't let them keep me..."
She bites her bloodied lip, for a moment longer. "... then..." What she starts, she starts slowly. "They were talking about... a host, and... they haven't told us anything. What I need to do is... is... I need to make... get some answers." There's someone she's struggling to reference head on, it can only be one person. "We can't... help Tyyko if we don't know, right? What's going on..."
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
Exactly because... Miho is thoughtful at that, but she trusts in Yua's understanding of the spiritual world. When she says it...
"Yes," Miho answers. "I can see that. So that's why it was so difficult... I suppose we must hope that the next is not in such a place as that."
Buried deep beneath the earth of their reality...
"..."
"I suppose some would be," Miho admits. "Yes, we'll be careful. We'll have to look harder. ...No, I will."
"She wouldn't," Miho agrees. "Probably, at least. She'll have to redo the measurement in any case, so you may as well." This is a small thing she can do to relieve Yua's anxiety.
But...
"We promised," Miho assures her. "...We must keep our word." It is that simple; the practical matters are outweighed. Though...
"I promise," Miho confirms.
"If you can gain more information," Miho says tentatively, "Then that's better. But..."
"I worry, how you might manage to get them. Do not forget that you are yourself important, Yua. Important to me."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"If they were in Sumaru," Yua sighs, "it would be easier... our home is neighbour to demons at the best of times, Mimi."
Indeed, it's just a few blocks away in Aoba that a Succubus runs a beauty salon... Yua's even visited, once or twice, in an attempt to raise her Guts alongside her Charm.
Sadly, only one of those scores ever seems to go up...
"You'll have more opportunities to look now," Yua encourages her, with a faint smile. "Now you're consulting... you get to travel all over, right?"
Yua pouts, hearing that the nurse will have to do it again. "Mooouu... but it always squeezes way too tight!" She whines, but at least wriggles out of Miho's grip, briefly, to unhook the hook and loop fabric attaching the cuff to her with her free hand. She sighs, as she declares: "That's better..."
(Her distal arm needs to stay straightened out, thanks to the fluids running into a needle at her elbow... or, well, which were running into a needle at her elbow. The whole thing's operated by a pump, so it's paused, too...)
"Mm," Yua hums, smiling, to Miho, when she underlines her own promise. "It's important."
But... so is she, Miho says, and Yua's gaze drops down.
"... I can't stop it," she says, quietly. "I guess that woman said it had to be me, again... she's obsessed, so... if there's no stopping her, I must at least outwit her." Her fingers bend, pressing thumb to fingers, pressed with tension. "I can't simply lay back and accept my fate... I need to fight, too."
Is that why she took up a sword, just earlier today...?
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
"True," Miho agrees. Demons. There are so many... and so easily brought about.
Still...
"Thank you," Miho says for Yua's encouragement. "That's true. I will do much more traveling."
She gives Yua a sympathetic look, but does not relent on the matter of the blood pressure. At least it's better for now. ...As long as they don't mess with the IV, anyway...
But it's important. Miho's sharp features are lit by green light as she considers Yua then, listening.
"...Mm."
"Well, I cannot tell you not to fight," she says. "No, I would not tell you not to fight, will not."
"But remember that your life matters to me. ...Fight, but have care that you can come back, at the end."
"Yes?"
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"Mm!" Yua hums, and manages, at least, to be a little bright as she encourages Miho on her travelling.
As regards her IV, she'll be good; she's torn out her share in her day, but seeing how distressed Miho was seeing her blood before, she doesn't want to make her feel worse. Plus, how would Remi feel? Yua convinced her to go and get some rest because Miho would take care of her... if she just panicked and tore at it and got her blood everywhere again, Yua's sure Remi would feel bad, too!
Oh, and she'd be bleeding, and that kind of protest never historically got her any further than restrained and mauled in the other arm...
... but Yua's more worried about the people she loves, right now.
Perhaps that's why it's so important for Miho to worry about her, as she retreats into herself, on the bed, no longer looking to the woman she loves more than anything in this wretched world, fingers growing still.
She does not reach out.
No... she is ashamed.
... of her filth and her weakness both, in her eye.
(The former, at least, has been ameliorated by another injection, when they retreated to Mementos...)
"There must be something I can do," she says, softly. "Even someone like me..."
'Someone like her', she says, but it's talking around the word she remembers tumbling from Kimitake's lips so often regarding her. He says she is nothing but an Okinawan whore; to make it about the colour of her skin is an insult on an insult, and he knows full well the weight of the American soldiers he's invoking.
"I'm sorry," she says, then, a tear beading at the corner of her garnet eye. "I should take care of myself better... but... I just can't escape it, so..."
You deserve better, Yua thinks, and does not say.
"I'll make sure we come back," she promises, instead.
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
Miho would worry a great deal.
But Miho reaches out for Yua's hand, when she sees that she hasn't reached for hers; she will not hold these things against her, never would. But, at least, they are still together. Something she can do...
What is 'someone like me?' Miho wonders, and her expression clouds. "Yua," she says. "...It is not as if you are some low creature. You are my shining Yua. Remember that."
She doesn't know what he's saying. But--
"I know," Miho says. "...I know."
"But I'll look forward to your return, then. ...I love you."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
Miho finds her hand easily movable; when she takes it into hers, at least, Yua remembers how to grasp her, fingers weaving between hers, her hand trembling.
"Nn," she hums, those tears gathering, as Miho insists she's not a low creature. It's just as Ritsuko assured her, back then, but...
"I'm dirty," she says, her tone hollowing out, because she can't shine any more.
"Taking advantage of another woman's lust to drag her secrets from her..."
Her grip is faint, too.
"I'm sorry," she says, again. "I love you."
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
Ritsuko assured her for one reason; Miho will do so for another. And there, Yua says it--she explains her feeling. Miho frowns again, but this is not the sharp frown of displeasure she might sometimes wear; it's a softer thing, different.
"Yua..."
"I don't hold it against you," she says. "You're making the best of a bad situation. ...You can't help but endure it. So you're trying to fight in the way that you can."
"...I..."
She shakes her head. "If nothing else, you don't have to be sorry to me, because it isn't your fault."
If anything it's hers, for not being stronger--but dwelling on that won't make Yua feel any better. So...
"I love you, too."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
Miho is so kind, and Yua...
Yua just weeps, there on the hospital bed, her shoulders trembling as her fingers curl feebly between hers.
"I'm nothing but a -- a whore," she insists, quietly, and her psyche will shatter on the word. "Giving my body to maintain order... Grandmother would be ashamed of me. Everyone always said... n-not to talk to the soldiers, or I'd end up..."
She draws a ragged breath.
"You don't understand, Mimi... she got obsessed with me because... because I told things to her! Because she interrogated me... and realised I was s-so fascinating! If I hadn't -- if I'd just lied -- if I'd made it sound less lavacious -- if I hadn't captured her imagination, there'd have been no reason to hurt me like that! And, and it wasn't just me, she realised she liked it, she targeted other bians... s-she says she's fixing us. It really is... my fault, so..."
Her breath hitches, as her shoulders shake. "I should take responsibility... but all I can do is... is do as they ask," she says, blinking at her tears. "If I could just plunge a blade into her, like... but I can't, Mimi. I know... it would be my blood. If I took care of these problems, I'd pay with my body in an even worse way... I can't lay in your arms if I'm dead!"
As her voice rises, the dam breaks, and she wails.
... she can't tell Miho that the same analysis she's performed on Natari applies equally to Kimitake, but the feelings are honest, just the same.
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
Miho listens to Yua weeping and talking--her insistence...
"Yua..."
She doesn't understand? "No," Miho says. "I don't. I can't. I wasn't there with you in that place... I wasn't put into that position."
"...But I don't think that her actions are your fault. If not you, someone else would have been the 'inspiration' for her. It is not your responsibility."
"..."
Miho rises from her seat then, without letting go of Yua's hand, and puts arms around her. "Yua..."
"She wants you to believe it's your fault, so that she can dodge her own responsibility. But one day, she will pay for what she's done."
"If no god, demon or deity ensures it first... then I will myself."
"I cannot know how you feel, here. ...But still, I am not ashamed of you. I am proud that you continue to fight these impossible things."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"They wanted to know... everything about us," Yua tries to explain. (Has never been able to explain, a thousand words a faint echo of that horrific lair. There are some things, they say, which are unspeakable evils; to describe the shape of them is to lose each sick detail to the enormity of the whole.) "Why we loved our art... what shaped us. What drove us. What scared us... our greatest regrets... they suffered no secrets from us, Mimi."
She gulps, and says: "She -- she told me to take responsibility," her voice is tight, as she illustrates one angle of an impossible shape. "The... first time."
The first time.
No wonder, perhaps, she is so afraid of the second, a thing Miho has seen her so avoidant of when she acknowledged it at all.
She leans forward, to sink her face in against Miho's shoulder; one arm lifts, to clutch at her, desperately. (The other she keeps flat against the bed, just as Miho's asked her, to stop that needle and its tubing from getting kinked or jostled.) "Mimi...!" She wails, into her.
Miho will kill her, if God or her demons do not... it's a thing which relieves Yua, even knowing the complex web of politics which is keeping her bound right now. Both of them are woven up and trapped, in their ways...
... but who could move freely and without worry, in a place like that?
(Nankuru nai sa, Tyrrha would say, she supposes... somehow, Miho will make everything turn out fine.)
But it doesn't feel fine. "I feel so bad... I'm ashamed of myself, Mimi! I feel like -- like I'm ruining myself -- coming back to you ruined! I didn't choose her... so it's dirty! It's not right!" If she'd chosen to lay with her, perhaps it would be a different matter, but...
The only person Yua's chosen is Miho.
"But... but if they won't tell you what's going on when you press them as a handler... I thought that she must be weaker, when she's in a state of undress. Even... even if she's doing those inhuman things... she must still be human, mustn't she? If I can take advantage of that... it's something only I can do." Yua takes a breath, and it trembles, still. "It's... the things Tykko's body said about her... grafting's something you do to grow something that was already grown, Mimi. But I'm scared to ask her about it directly... doesn't it seem like it was an injury to her thinking that hurt her? Or, how she feels, or... mm, you know? If the danger's in her head... she's really vulnerable. And that... meltdown process... it was done with no care towards saving her at all. They don't care..."
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
Everything... "How horrid," Miho says, someone who is fond of her secrets--prefers to stand back, apart, understand before she issues forth statements.
But... she told her that. Miho's eyes narrow. "I have never met her, and yet I hate her. They will be wise if they do not encourage us to meet."
But Miho will--if it comes down to it, if it all crumbles...
She can do that much.
Maybe Tyrrha would say it, but Miho will try.
"I see," Miho says of Yua's feeling. "...I suppose it is because I see it as something she is doing to you; not something you are choosing. Not something you are putting forth."
"...So the fact that you didn't choose is, to me, what absolves you of what would have been that way. I agree, though. It's not right. It is not acceptable. ...I simply blame her, and not you."
Miho sees it.
"Hmm..."
"...Think of the shinobi," Miho suggests. "They who sacrifice open honor for an honor in the shadows--to do what they must, though it might be difficult and dark."
"Our young ally," Shiryuu, "Is not shamed for acting in the shadows. Neither should you be, when the shadows can be where you are strong."
"As for Tyrrha..." She nods, thoughtfully. "To ask her directly would be difficult--I know... I know that it was because of me, that she was hurt. But..."
"They don't. They only care that she would harm them in the melting. ...But we'll protect her. We will."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
There was no standing back, in that place where they sought Revelation.
... not for the people in gowns, anyway.
"She knows better than to show you her face," Yua remarks, bitterly, of Natari always being absent when Miho queries the facility. "No one conditioned you to stay your hand..."
(It was a more remarkable thing than the children may have realised, that Yua was able to thrust that blade forward at all -- with poor form or otherwise.)
But... Miho points out that not choosing is itself absolution, and Yua nods, shakily, against her. "Mm... it's her fault. She... she did this to me! I hate her, Mimi... I really hate her... I feel so ugly, hating so much."
Miho suggests that she think of the shinobi, though, and Yua sniffles, nodding against her. "Shishi's been helping me..." She says, quietly. "It's hard for him, because... I told him some difficult things... some things it's really hard to say. Um... don't make him tell you, okay? I... I can't, um..." Her fingers curl, in Miho's suit, and there is so little power behind them. "... I'd tell you if I could," she whispers, her voice torn at the edges. "Really... really."
... there must be a great many things weighing on Yua. Perhaps some of them are even poisons it is too difficult to share with the woman who shares her bed... if that's so, is it better that she can at least share them with someone? Shiryuu is at least certainly unthreatening... as someone who Yua would never fancy in a million years, despite his familiar reassuring leadership.
(It's the 'his' of it all. Despite being the femme of the pair, Yua's never had an eye for men...)
"But I realised... I have to be stronger. I need to do what must be done, Mimi... if I don't fight, too, we'll never reach our happy tomorrow. I can't just hide behind you and Recchi... there must be something I can do, even though I'm weak and delicate. For you, and... and for Hiroki and Tykko, too!"
Yua pulls back a little, though, to look to Miho, her hand lifting to her cheek. "I was watching," she says. "Her, and you... while you were communing, Mimi, she... she felt she couldn't just take it easy, since the Dragon Line meant so much to us. I think that's what upset her so... she's a very tege girl," an easygoing girl, "and to defy that image... it must have been holding her up by a thread. You know... you remember us," she adds, glancing aside, recalling the way she and Remi first acted when they escaped.
"You were there for me, back then," she says, as she looks to Miho again. "... so now, I want to help her, too."
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
"...True." No one conditioned Miho that way.
Still, she believes what she says. "Yes," Miho encourages. "Blame her. Hate her. ...It is not ugly, to hate that which is awful."
But Miho makes her suggestion, and learns something for it. "...I won't," Miho says, though she is sure even her considerable powers of persuasion would not loosen Shiryuu's tongue if he were determined to still it. "I believe you. ...I will not force the matter, on you or on him."
It is better she can tell someone...
But maybe talking to him would be good, regardless.
Still... "..."
"I cannot argue that," Miho says. "Were it possible, I would shield you from all such things, and take it on myself. ...But I can't; perhaps it's better that we work together, instead. That way, when we win... it will be ours. Not only mine, to be gifted to you."
For both of them.
But hmm... "Yes. A contradiction in her 'spirit'," Miho surmises. "Yes, I remember. She will become more resilient with time. Until then... we must safeguard her."
"I will treat her as my own. ...Because she is. We chose her, after all."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"It's not...?" Yua wonders, and with wonder. "If it's not... then I'm happy...!"
Maybe it's not so bad that she'll tear it down to build her nest, after all...
To say there is a thing she cannot say is as honest as she can be; Yua knows Miho too well to think she can't see the outline of an unseen shadow, cast over her. She worries over her wife's worries, those things which drive her to see enemies in every corner, but...
But of course Kimitake knew that, when he made her into a liar.
He knew how grievous it was, this thing which weighs on her, stark and unspoken.
(... he told her she'd regret it, if she took all month to recover a second time, and she had to shape her reply to assuage all her listeners.)
Miho, though, does not use force like they do, neither Kimitake nor Natari; Yua sighs, into her neck. "Thankyu," Yua murmurs, nuzzling at her. "I trust him, Mimi... maybe you can, too?"
Yua, it seems, thinks it would be good for Miho to talk to Shiryuu, too.
"I love Mimi's gifts," Yua says, quietly. "When Mimi gets me flowers, or pretty jewelery, or chocolates... I'm always so happy! But our life's bigger than that... you shouldn't have to hold it up all on your own. If I'm your 'home wife'... let me protect our home, too, Mimi."
She smiles, when Miho understands so easily; but of course she would, when she knows Yua so well. "That's right... that's exactly right! Ah... Mimi... I love you so so so much," she smiles, as she sinks back in against her pillows. (Miho, of course, made sure they brought in extra for her.) "That's right... we chose her, so she's our daughter, just the same. That's why I went so far, Mimi... I wanted to protect her."
Yua shakes her head, her smile a little gentler. "Nn... I did protect her, didn't I? I saved her... and we'll keep on saving her. We'll keep her safe..."
And the way Miho can keep Yua safe, right now, may well be to encourage her to rest, now it seems her heart's a little more at ease.
(... and to hold her hand when the Dark Hour ends and the nurse realises Yua's taken her cuff off when she turned her back for a second, of course.)