The first thing that Chihiro saw when her eyes fluttered open was Haku staring down at her, a stricken expression written across his features. It was a jarring change from the usual calm and control he displayed around her, and for a few awful seconds she wondered what on Earth could possibly be wrong with her, to trouble him quite so much.

"Chihiro," he said at last, and his voice sounded strangely blurry to her, as though he were calling out to her from the surface of a body of water and she were floating several feet below. "Chihiro – are you alright?"

She groaned – or at least, she thought she did, could feel the vibration against her soft palate, though she couldn't tell if she'd actually managed to produce a sound – and her vision spun dizzily, a dull soreness in her temples all the while. Slowly but surely, her senses began to return to her, a sudden tingling blossoming into place at the tips of her fingers and her feet, like she'd been frozen solid and had been left to thaw out. Almost against her own wishes, her eyelids, suddenly impossibly heavy, fell shut for a moment; as she fought to keep her eyes open, she thought she could feel the softness of Haku's fingers against the back of her neck, raising her head the slightest bit upward for support. Even in spite of the worry apparent in his eyes, his touch was as careful and gentle as ever.

"Haku? What – what happened?" she finally asked, doing her best to enunciate clearly in spite of the fact that it seemed to her as if her voice were dragging, as thick and slow as honey. She stirred just the slightest bit, but even that much movement sent a bone-deep ache throughout her entire body.

"Just relax," was his immediate response as he gingerly pulled her closer to him, resting her head upon his lap in order to provide her some support. "And try not to move around too much until you've rested a bit. It may take a while for the magic to wear off." He turned away from her for a handful of seconds, silent but obviously rattled underneath his veneer of calm and control. She couldn't quite tell, but out of the corner of her eye, it appeared as though he were holding a tiny clay bowl; sure enough, when he turned back to face her, she could see that it was just that, filled to the brim with fresh, clear water.

"You blacked out," he deigned to elaborate at last, inclining her head the slightest bit upward. "Only for a short time, so I'm certain you'll be alright, but . . . just try and take slow, deep breaths for now. Here – drink this in the meantime." He tilted the bowl slightly in order to keep it close to her mouth, and, prompted by his words, Chihiro accepted it from there, placing the tiny basin in her own hands and taking a few steady, easy sips. The water was refreshingly cold, and as the seconds ticked by, she could feel the weakness and shakiness in her limbs slowly begin to subside.

Gazing up at him in an expression of mingled bemusement and gratitude, Chihiro murmured, "Thank you, Haku. For looking after me, I mean. I'm so sorry, I – I don't know what I did. I must have grabbed the wrong one—"

Almost immediately, Haku shook his head, eyes wide and surprisingly earnest as he met her stare with one of his own. "No, Chihiro," he insisted, an unusual sort of strain in the undercurrent of his voice. "You neither owe me nor anyone else anything close to an apology. This was not your fault. Do you understand that?"

She gave a brisk nod of her head in response. "Y-yes," she stuttered lamely, surprised by the intensity of his tone. "Will the orb that I got still work? Do we need to get another one?"

The look in his eyes softened at her inquiry, and with the quietest sigh, he shook his head and said, "You don't need to trouble yourself over that. I will be sure to make amends wherever necessary, but for now, you just need to wait until you've regained your strength."

She did her best to nod her head in response, though it was a bit more difficult to execute from her current angle. By now it seemed that her head had ceased in its pounding, her pulse no longer rushing in her ears but slow and stable. Strange, she couldn't help but think, how Haku's presence always appeared to have that very effect upon her. For whatever reason, Chihiro had been left with the lingering feeling ever since arriving here that he was the only familiar thing she had here at the bath house; she couldn't remember how it was that his face, his voice, everything seemed just as close to her as if they were family, but it brought her a significant amount of comfort all the same.

Again, her thoughts drifted back to the dream she'd had last night, flying on the back of a beautiful white dragon; it was the safest and yet the most exhilarated she'd ever felt, and she couldn't help but notice that she felt the exact same way every time she looked at him.

"Haku?" she spoke up after a while, swallowing hard past the ragged dryness in her throat.

"Yes?"

For a moment, she found herself almost hesitant to respond. She knew all too well that Haku wouldn't laugh at her or berate her if she voiced her thoughts or concerns, and yet something filled her with nervousness at the thought of being open or vulnerable around him. He seemed so wise, so ageless in comparison to herself – it seemed ridiculous, laughable, to even entertain the idea of bothering him with her silly worries.

Still, she drew a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and at last managed to say, "Would you . . . I mean . . . you wouldn't mind lying down with me here, would you? For just a little while?" Even to ask that much of him felt childlike, stupid of her; in the silence that followed her request, her stomach sank to the floor and she found herself hoping beyond hope that he at least wouldn't laugh.

Thankfully, there seemed to be nothing but kindness (if not mildest surprise) that registered across his features. No doubt, the request must have seemed odd to him, even he did make his best effort to keep from showing it. Here she was, acting as if she were a little girl again, all of the sudden feeling incredibly foolish . . . and there he was, just as calm and thoughtful as ever, as mysterious and graceful as the dragon from her dream. Still, he must have seen something in the request worth honoring, because she watched in subdued amazement as he, without a word, sank down to the ground, lying slowly down on his back beside her on the cold stone floor. Amusement flashed through his eyes for only the briefest instant before his hand found hers, his long, slender fingers entwining with her own.

"Is this what you had in mind?" he asked, green eyes wide and questing as they searched her gaze with their usual studious attention to detail.

A smile threatened to break the practiced calm on Chihiro's face. "Yes," she said after a moment's pause, feeling as though she'd known him all her life even if her memories of him were foggy and far away. "This is perfect."

Haku said nothing in response for what felt like an eternity, but he did return her words with the gentlest squeeze to her hand, an oddly personal, human gesture coming from someone who always seemed to be centuries apart from her. (Though, if she were being completely honest, that was precisely what she'd hoped for.) Briefly, she found herself wondering how many nights they'd spent like this in the past – if any at all – and if he was thinking about them, now, if he wanted her to remember just as badly as she did. Were there genuine feelings beneath that chilly, aloof mask, or was he just as indifferent towards her as everyone else here? Sometimes, she found it hard to make that distinction.

"I am sorry," he said, just when the two of them had begun to ease into a comfortable silence, "that you've been trapped here . . . again. Just know that if there were any possible way that I could return you home any sooner, I would. The last thing that I want for you is to be confined to this world . . . as I am."

The pain in his voice was subdued, but raw and startlingly real, an unexpected turn from his usual withdrawn, closed-off demeanor. If there'd been any doubt in Chihiro's mind that he had every intention of helping her on whatever level that he possibly could, then it had all been effectively chased away right in that moment. He was willing to be personal with her in ways that he would never dare display in front of anyone else, and she only wished that she could remember why that was. Ever since they'd first crossed paths yesterday afternoon, she'd felt terrible for being unable to reciprocate the kindness that he'd shown to her, and this only further cemented that feeling in her mind.

"You can't leave?" she asked, unable to help her curiosity. She inclined her head slightly upward as she spoke in order to get a better look at her companion, and was certainly intrigued by the thoughtfulness that she found, bright in his eyes.

With a shake of his head, Haku responded, "No." His gaze met hers, and for a few moments, they lay side-by-side, reveling in the silence, before he decided to speak up again. "I suppose I could, now that I no longer answer to Yubaba in the same way that I once did, but . . . well, I have nowhere else that I can go."

This, perhaps, was the saddest statement that Chihiro had heard from him yet. She could think of nothing worse than having no real sense of belonging anywhere, no place to truly call home, or even a memory of somewhere else to think of in the middle of the night. While she was certainly frightened now that she'd wound up trapped in this place, at least she had her thoughts of her house and her family, even her friends, to keep her from falling into complete despair. They were what gave her the strength to keep pushing forward; knowing that she'd be able to return to them (hopefully sometime soon) gave her the courage that she needed to survive this place. And Haku – quiet, distant, but unfailingly kind Haku – had none of that.

For a moment, impulse struck her and she found herself wondering if it would be possible to take him back home with her. He'd said that it would be possible for him to leave, just that he had nowhere to go; perhaps he could find the place that he needed with her.

Immediately, Chihiro realized the presumptuousness of such a thought, and felt her cheeks redden in response. Regardless of the fact that everyone told her that she'd met Haku before, as far as she could remember, she'd only known him since yesterday; it seemed ridiculous, then, to even entertain the thought of giving him a home right alongside her own. And even if she did make such an offer, what made her think that someone like him would ever agree to it?

Before she could stop herself, she asked, "Don't you have any family who know where you are? Maybe you could try to find them, and then you could go home again. It must be miserable to just be stuck here for that long and not even try to get out."

The silence that spanned between them in the moments afterward told her all that she needed to know. When Haku spoke up again, there was a note of finality in the undercurrent of his voice that denoted there would be no further discussion as far as the topic of his home was concerned. "I was miserable for a very long time. And it took several years for me to come to peace with all that has happened, but I finally did when I realized that home isn't always necessarily a place. There are some circumstances where . . . home can be a person, too."

This statement earned another wistful sigh from Chihiro. "I'm so sorry, Haku," she murmured, closing her eyes for a moment.

To her surprise, Haku only seemed amused by this. "Sorry?" he repeated. "What on Earth has made you believe that you owe me so many apologies, Chihiro?"

"I'm just . . . sorry," she muttered, frustrated now more than ever with her inability to articulate exactly what was going on in her mind. "For always sticking my foot in my mouth. Especially whenever I'm around you. I know you must feel like I'm deliberately trying to upset you by now, but I promise I'm not."

For a few awful seconds, he remained quiet, and she almost grew fearful that he was in total agreement with her and would show no hesitation in saying so. His gaze met hers, steady and intelligent, and it came as more than a slight shock to hear him answer, "I understand. It isn't lost on me how much you have been through since yesterday afternoon, nor how much we have asked of you in all that time. All things considered, I can forgive a few episodes of ineloquence," he added, and if she wasn't mistaken, she thought she saw a flash of genuine humor glint in the mysterious green of his eyes.

Unable to help herself, Chihiro felt the first traces of a rueful smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. "Thank you," she said, as earnest as she'd ever heard herself before. "For everything. Really. If you hadn't been the one to find me yesterday, I don't know what I would've done. Especially since I . . ." another huff of annoyance – mainly directed towards herself – and then she continued, "I'm just so . . . I feel so scared."

"You have no reason to be," was the dragon boy's immediate response, and though such words may have seemed dismissive or cold from anyone else (or even from Haku himself under other circumstances) now she found only comfort in them. "I have mentioned this before, but you must remember that you survived this place once before. And you were much younger then, and the stakes far higher."

"I . . . guess so," she sighed, hating more than anything that she couldn't just have as much faith in herself as he obviously placed in her. "But to me, this all feels so unfamiliar. It's like being here for the first time all over again." She swallowed hard against the sudden lump in her throat, dreading the looming threat of tears that stung the backs of her eyelids. With a hollow, humorless little laugh, she asked, "Are you sure I'm the girl you're thinking of at all? You must have me mixed up with someone."

A rueful smile touched the corners of his mouth, if only for a fleeting instant. "The more that I speak with you," he confided, "the more certain I become that it is you." A short pause spanned between them before he drew a deep breath, seeming to take time to gather the proper words before he spoke again. "There was a time, long ago, when you helped me to recover a memory of something very important to me. And now, I will do whatever I can to do the same for you."

Now it was Chihiro's turn to smile, if only because her vision had become slightly blurry with tears that she didn't dare to shed. "Promise?"

"I promise."

The day had drawn to an end, the sunset painting the sky an elaborate mix of orange, red, and pink, and Haku couldn't remember a time that he'd felt quite so exhausted as this. He hadn't expected the day's events to draw quite so much out of him; the dilemma surrounding the recovery of Chihiro's memories only seemed to worsen by the second, and here he stood, practically helpless to get it under control, save for the vague instructions provided to him by Yubaba. What had happened earlier in the cave troubled him deeply, and he knew that before they continued searching for the remaining ingredients, he wanted to get some answers pertaining to that much first and foremost.

The spell shouldn't have had quite such a strong adverse effect upon her; he'd expected perhaps a slight headache, a minuscule reaction to a perfectly acceptable amount of magic, and yet, what he'd seen back there had been something entirely different. It was almost as if there was already a powerful energy deep within Chihiro herself, and it had fought against the magic in the water of the spring. He supposed it was possible that some of the spells she had encountered during her first visit to the spirit world would have had some lingering effects, but after eight years? It seemed more than a little unthinkable to him.

With any luck, Kamaji would be able to tell him something that would help make sense of it all.

Now that things were winding down for the steadily-approaching night – the baths long since closed to the public, the guests all readying themselves for a peaceful slumber – Haku felt all the more certain that he would be able to talk to the boiler man on more level terms. It was often difficult to hold a conversation with him when his mind (as well as his eight arms) seemed to be in a million different places at once, but now, with minimal distractions, they could truly sit down and figure out what they needed to do about Chihiro's dilemma. There were so many things left unresolved – no thanks to Yubaba, who no doubt derived great pleasure from the opportunity to be so cryptic with them – that he wondered if they would even cover all that they needed to within one night.

Most importantly, he felt it necessary to discuss all this without Chihiro overhearing it. Much as he hated to keep her out of a conversation that revolved mostly around the fact that she was stuck here in the first place, she had been through a lot within the course of the past two days, and the last thing he wanted was to place more stress upon her shoulders. Everything that they talked about tonight would be things that he could easily tell her when the morning came, but for now, it seemed a decent night's rest would help her more than anything else.

At last, Haku came to the door that led to the boiler room. Throwing a cautious glance over his shoulder, he paused just a moment before slipping through to the other side . . . never once noticing that Chihiro had, in fact, snuck out of bed, and was following undetected not far behind.