He stepped out of the operation room a different man; a terrible weight had been removed from his shoulders, but, for the time being, he looked like he did not know what to do without it.
Nina's arms wrapped around him before his back could hit the wall. He was lightheaded with fatigue and hunger, and trying to lean on something for support, but she had grabbed him and took most of his weight herself. He buried his face in her neck, grateful to be held, to finally be allowed to relax. In the back of his mind, it occurred to him that people were watching, that Nina had to breathe in the horrible smell of his dried sweat and filthy hair, that he should have said something to her apropos the surgery before collapsing in her arms like a weakling, but the months of insomnia, starving, and paranoid chases had caught up with him. There was nothing in the world that would have given his languid, exhausted body the will to move: not Johann, not the police, not Roberto, and certainly not self-consciousness and embarrassment.
Nina patted him on the head with silent understanding. She had peeled off his green surgeon's cap, and he hoped for her sake that there wasn't a lot of dandruff. Each time her fingers moved over his scalp, he felt a bit of dead skin and grease being dislodged. He felt disgusting, but she didn't seem to mind; she smoothed his hair back like a doting mother and kissed him softly on the temple.
He tensed. Circumstances had forced them into abnormal amounts of physical contact, and he was used to the feel of her body from the sheer number of times he'd held it simply in order to protect it. At her weakest, she would wrap her arms around his bicep and lean her head against his chin; and sometimes, when he held her hand, his fingers would absentmindedly caress her palm as they had Eva's. But he could not recall her ever kissing him, chastely or otherwise. She had always seemed so focused on Johann that he simply figured that not only did she not consider him in that kind of light, but that she did not see him in any light at all.
And then her she lifted his face with her cold, determined fingers, and kissed him on the lips.
"Do you remember?" she asked him that night, when he was released from questioning and allowed to return to his own home and his own bed. The air was stale there, and everything covered in dust. He had gone to open the windows and saw the sill coated in two new layers of pigeon shit. Nina came up from behind, kissing his shoulder blade. He led her to the bedroom; she left her jacket on the door step and her skirt on the floor. She smiled up at him, and the part of him that suspected that she was only doing this because she could think of no other way to thank him, as some kind of clumsy and inadequate reimbursement for having his life torn apart by her and Johann, realized that she wanted him probably much more than he could want her; that she saw him in blind esteem as her hero and savior, and that nothing that he could presently say or do could disabuse her of that idea.
"When I met you at Heidelberg Castle that day, when you were running to meet me and screaming my name, do you remember what I said to you?"
He shook his head. He remembered Mauler's death from that day, and little else.
"I said... I asked you if you were my prince. And I didn't realize it at the time, but you were. You are."
Tenma said nothing for a long time. "A true prince sticks around," he said at length. "I can't stay here."
She bit her lip, simultaneously disappointed and understanding. By now, she knew what to expect from him. He simply had to atone, or to feel that he was atoning, even though the crimes were not his. Vardemann had told her about the Turkish woman and the fiasco with her husband, and though nothing in the world could make her perceive the incident as Tenma's fault in any way, shape, or form, she realized now why he felt so perpetually guilty. He felt that he had a price to pay, and, after that price, a calling. And maybe, after nobody else in the world needed help, he would come back to her.
"My prince is different," she told him defiantly. With pride. "He goes around the world saving those in need. And he doesn't have a castle. And he doesn't have a white horse. Or even a sword. Only these two hands."
Tenma blushed as she kissed his knuckles.
"Once in a while, he pays a visit to his princess. She will have missed him, but she is strong, and she is proud of him, and she has her own innocent to protect."
He stroked her cheek sadly, believing very little of it. "I know you're strong."
She nodded, fighting back tears. His fingers wandered to the corner of her lips, and he kissed her. She pulled away.
"Did you mean it? When we met Johann at the Red Rose Mansion and I - I regained some of my memories..."
"Did I mean what?"
"You have bad memory, Tenma. Didn't you mean what you said, or was that only an attempt to stop me from pulling the trigger?"
"I meant what I said, Nina. But I still can't stay."
"I'm not asking you to stay. Just to not forget me."
Tenma paused before the refrigerator. There was a laminated crayon drawing affixed to it with a magnet from Prague, of a pretty yellow-haired woman, a small boy whose foot rested upon a black-and-white ball, and something that looked like an Asian homeless person. To the left of the footballer boy's head, the bum and the pretty yellow-haired woman held hands.
Making sure Dieter was asleep in his room, he tiptoed to Nina's. Her bedside lamp was on, casting a warm glow over her lips and outstretched arm. He closed the door as quietly as he could.
"I came for a certain princess," he said.
She smiled.