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"I assume some of the non-humans consume it," Nobunaga answers blandly. "Or just to unnerve anyone who would be. Remind people of demon cult rituals." Normal things, surely.

Cold Nobunaga is definitely business Nobunaga. Emotions are exhausting.

"I do have Winona on me." Nobunaga adjusts the haori to reveal it, "But no offense Arthur, he almost killed himself with backfiring it the first time, I don't want someone turning it on you or taking out some of the cabins. I think we can both agree, if anyone decides to develop a death wish in the next few days, I'll be happy to help them meet their fate, and I won't even need Winona to do it."

Arthur's face is a picture of disgust at the idea that some of the passengers might drink blood. "Jesus christ," he mutters. Although-- "Well. Rather that than- than it coming from one of the other passengers on the ship, I suppose. But... christ."

You know what? It has, more than once, occurred to Arthur that the blood might be Crichton's. And this is, not to belabour the point, an idea that he does not like. He would take a whole ship full of secret Draculas over the blood belonging to Crichton.

"If you won't need Winona, then you'll be happy to leave her here with me. It's not as if I'm going to- to open carry the damn thing about the ship. I'll keep her locked up here until Crichton comes back."

It's not Crichton's blood, because Crichton wasn't bled out, but that means if it's not from the buffet, then there's another victim somewhere, and that's arguably probably worse.

"If you're going to keep her locked up, what does it matter if I keep her on me?" A few things trickle through Nobunaga's brain, and he remembers finally that cultures were different. Things he took for granted, were different. "In Hell, it is customary to have a weapons-bearer so that should anything happen to me in battle, Yasuke and Ranmaru would be in charge of making sure only Hideyoshi or someone as strong as him could hold onto my weapons. If Hideyoshi fell, or was just injured, I'd be in charge of his blades. Same with Masamune. This one, Souza Samonji," he points to the shorter of the two swords, oblivious somehow still that Arthur is blind. "I took from defeating Yoshimoto Imagawa in my first major war victory against another clan. Most swords in my collection at home are from defeating others. Winona wasn't on Crichton when he fell. Maybe it's just coincidence, maybe the enemy knocked her away, but as a friend, I cannot ignore the possibility he didn't want it to fall to wrong hands."

The cold tone dissipates immensely, some of the actual sorrow seeping in. "He called me his friend, Arthur." He's never had a friend before! And Klaus called him a friend too, but he wouldn't have even met Klaus if not for Crichton.

Arthur listens impatiently; at another time, on another day, he'd be interested in these cultural details, but here and now it feels like time-wasting. He looks behind himself at one point, thinking he heard a noise inside the cabin and turning his ear to check-- but it's nothing, there's nothing. He turns back to the gap in the door.

The sadness that breaks through Nobunaga's steely voice, though? That reaches him.

Quietly: "Me, too. He's..."

Arthur struggles for a moment, not because there's nothing to finish that sentence, but because there's too much. He spends a lot of time thinking about Crichton, both the broad strokes and the small details, embarrassing and sad and good memories and where they might go from here.

"He's a good man." A beat. "I'm... I hope you're all right. I-I could have cushioned the news a little more than I did."

If Nobunaga could physically evoke question marks, he would be now.

"No, I--" Of course I'm fine, I'm not the one in the morgue. It's not about Nobunaga, it's about Crichton, but also Arthur, probably. "I'm used to Hell. There's a reason, several, I haven't had friends before here. Are you okay? Is there anything you need help with? Or something Crichton would normally be doing with you? He'd want you looked after even more than Winona, I'm sure."

Nobunaga's default is also to look after others and disregard himself under pressure. It's easier, and then others know to look after him too.

"Looked after?" Arthur repeats, incredulous, as if the words were a deliberate insult. "Is that what he's said to you? Christ, I-I-I may be an invalid--" (and he pronounces invalid like a judgement, like it's a failure he can't escape) "--but I don't need constant monitoring."

It doesn't occur to him, because there's nothing quite like the cognitive distortions in the first days of a tailspin, that Nobunaga is probably less worried about his eyes than about his mental state.

"You're not an invalid, and he didn't mention you," Nobunaga sighs. He still doesn't know Arthur's blind. "I look after my troops, I don't mean it like minding children, I mean it like... friends. I promised to protect him if an old enemy should come. I failed him once already, I don't wish to again, understand?" It's still mostly icy, but just detached rather than deliberately unemotional.

"If anything happened to me, I'd want Klaus looked after." You know what, that's probably a really weird thing to say, but Nobunaga is a million kinds of weird. So he's just going to accept that. And it's a better thing to get mad at him for words than for not being Crichton, and failing him.

Arthur, who has no earthly idea that Nobunaga is oblivious to his blindness, takes his comment as an empty platitude, and puts all the weight on it that an empty platitude deserves.

"Of course," he says, to all of it, and while he doesn't say it rudely, his voice doesn't rise much above the current Nobunaga level of heartfelt raw emotion. You could almost describe it as avoidant. "And... and as friends, you understand if I-I, if I want to be alone for a while."

Alone. In his cabin. Which has no other people in it. No-one but him.

"Just how is Klaus so hard to imitate anyway? I don't think we've met."

"Okay," Nobunaga was about to leave, but the question about Klaus instantly distracted him with a laugh. "Two things. He has a way of walking like he's forever dancing, floating on air without wings, even though he's got all the coordination of a drunk kitten. And two, he is the only person with a crazier history than mine, and he has a cadence when telling of it, like he is just speaking out loud to himself. Like he doesn't even realize someone could be listening, because hes used to being ignored. No matter how someone delved his memories, I do not think they could match his cadence. They might find themselves overwhelmed even."

A crazier history than Hell and monk murder and so on? If Arthur weren't busy guarding the door like a dog standing over its food bowl, he'd find that pretty interesting.

Flatly:

"Right. Well, I'll keep an eye out for a man who looks like he's dancing."

"You understand poetry, Arthur," an eyeroll. It's almost audible! At least it's in Nobunaga's tone! (Not that he realizes Arthur is blind... still.) "Ask him for a story about his childhood and what it's like to have the same birthday as 6 siblings and be taught martial arts by a monkey named Pogo, and have a mechanical mother, because your father couldn't be assed to do most things as a parent right, or even bother giving you proper names, just called you by numbers, according to your usefulness to him. If he gets fazed by the question? It's not Klaus. If he just sort of sighs and asks which of the times Reginald Hargreaves failed them as a father: either drugging one son so they couldn't use their powers, or locking Klaus in with ghosts, or why Five ran away before they could even properly named? Yeah, That's my lucky number 4."

A merry hum! "Four is a homonym with death in Japan. It's considered extremely unlucky, they won't even write it the same way, as shi instead they write it as yon. It's that feared. Follow his cadence. Go as extreme as possible. You can even ask him about torture. His torturers gave up on him, he's too hardcore for them. If it's not him, I think any ghost would also give up trying to mimic his reactions. As I said, they'd be overwhelmed."

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