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Once, nothing may have frightened him. Nothing meant that his existence had ended, had passed into the oblivion of a kind death. He had never believed in anything beyond life; his sins didn't allow for the comforts of heaven. He would rather suffer his hell in darkness. Is seemed that he wasn't even deserving of Hell. The days came in shades of agony; red for the moments when near consciousness returned in a screaming wave of fire racing through his veins. Deep blue for a wash of chemical peace, with the red pain hovering along the edges in cresting waves, waiting for the inevitable retreat of the illusionary nothing. Now black. True, deep, and free. In nothing he could see images sometimes, the past, what he dreamed the future to be, when a future was still his to have. Himself with his love at his side, in school, perhaps with a full time job that demanded nothing more from him than his presence at a desk and his lithe fingers tapping away at keys. The red haze had already begun to seep into his protective nothing, cracking at the armor he fought to maintain. He had no sense of time, even when the colors brought him from the darkness, but he was aware that the red attacked more frequently, a little less bright each time. The blue had mellowed as well, phasing with the red agony to wash over him with a violet ache. And, one moment, nothing failed. It was not red, nor blue, which invaded him this time, but white. Stark, cleansing....familiar white. weiß... The images were swept up in the maelstrom of bright, and voices began to tease at the barest edges of his psyche. It was nothing he understood at first, the effort to comprehend what was being said distracting him from his efforts to resist the light. The new color meant only one thing, the one thing he had been hiding from in his black. White meant life. A voice cut through the colors, the images of past and future. And upon understanding, upon regaining the light he had hoped to never see again, he did what his soul begged him to do. "Fujimiya-san?" He screamed. § § § § § White. White was everything. It was the light in his room, the stiff sheets across his body, the sanitized walls and large rectangles of soundproof tiles banded across the ceiling. Of which there were 27, including the fluorescing panels that paled anything of color in their reach. He had not seen much more since waking from his drug induced coma to a world of shocking agony. Few memories remained of those first moments, beyond his long unused voice begging to be killed, to be sent back to the nothing where the pain could not reach. Those first days were red in his mind, his mind and body finally connecting. There were no blue moments, as they explained that they were trying to wean him from the pain medication. They were one doctor and three nurses, none of whom did he recognize beyond their soft voices and inane questions regarding his current state of being. He hadn't the strength to tell them how he really felt, about his pain, about their treatment, or about the apparent unfairness of his denial of final peace. He just nodded or shook his head, wishing to be left alone...yet taking a guilty pleasure in their attention. His first real memories, ones without an aura about them, began the day he started to walk again. § § § § § "I was told you were stubborn, Fujimiya-san," the young therapist scowled at the boy in the wheelchair before him. Listless violet eyes sparked with anger for a moment, hands gripping the arms of the chair as if he would do what he was asked. He was carefully enrobed in a stark white hospital gown, with pale white scrubs sparing him the indignity of going through the facility completely nude. The boy looked like a ghost, with only his blood red hair as a sign of realism about his frame. The therapist sighed. The red head was hopeless. He had worked passively while still bed ridden, doing what was needed to be allowed out of bed. He made no sound as his legs were pushed to his chest and stretched back, or as his arms were moved in pantomime of true movement. Ran had made a quick recovery despite this, most likely because of the treatment he had received in his coma. Ran didn't want to look at the therapist, a kid barely older than himself. Walking again meant the he admitted to being alive, instead of the death he had longed for. Memories of before had begun to seep back into his life, of his life with...Aya-chan...with Weiß...with... He was still ignorant of the fate his team or his sister. He didn't know who had taken the effort to drag him from the watery grave of the fallen temple. He had a very low opinion of the person who had had that bright thought. Bringing him back from the dead may have not been the most intelligent move on their part. Still, perhaps his recovery was a bargaining chip. They obviously wanted him to become fully functional again, as evidenced by the frazzled young therapist standing at the other end of the parallel bars. After a full week of making the other lift his deceptively slight body to and from the chair, just to sit and stare at the ceiling through careless eyes, the boy kept coming back. They wanted him whole, he wanted information. "You," he whispered, voice still hoarse from disuse. He didn't talk to his doctor or nurses, replying only with small movements of his head. The therapist looked up sharply, dark eyes wide with surprise. "You can talk," he quipped, humor falling short at Ran's unamused face. Aya leaned forward. "I'll make you a deal." His hands folded before him, body slowly recovering its previous grace. The therapist swallowed hard, suddenly reminded that nearly invalid or not, the boy before him was deadly, a trained assassin. "I'll do whatever is asked of me...this," he gestured negligently to the bars, "or any other monkey tricks they want me to do." The therapist recovered long enough to realize that Ran had finally accepted the unpleasant truth that he was indeed alive, and that there was more to his rescue than met the eye. "Tell me your demands, and I will ask my superiors, Fujimiya-san." "First of all, call me Ay-," he caught himself, eyes blinking once. "Ran." No one had called him by his family name since before Aya-chan's accident. Hearing the polite Japanese brought up memories that had no place in his present...happiness better left behind. It had been hard enough to say his own; it was still unfamiliar to his ears and voice. He stared hard at the young man before him, watching him pale. "For every session of therapy that I suffer through, I will ask a question. It must be answered. No dealing, no reneging. The question does not matter." The boy nodded once, walking thoughtfully along the length of the bars. "Do you honestly believe you will get the answers you seek?" Determined violet glanced up once. Ran laughed harshly. "For some reason or another, I seem to have become indispensable to Kritiker, a far cry from my previous standing on the ladder in life." He folded his hands in his lap, taking time to straighten the stiff linen of his gown. "They will answer me...because you were told I was stubborn." § § § § § Ran became eerily aware of his body over the next week of therapy. His legs seemed to have lost none of their muscle tone, a contradiction to the atrophy that occurred with extended bed rest. He was up and walking within three days, with only three of his questions answered. "Is my team alive?" "Yes." An evasive answer. Eyes focused on Ran's legs as they were lowered from the chair to the ground. "Your team is alive." Ran knew that he would have to word his questions carefully. Therapist or not, the boy was still trained as a Kritiker agent. He could avoid the true answer in a thousand different ways. The second day brought a new tact to Ran's questioning. "What is your name?" That surprised the boy standing with an encouraging smile as his charge walked the length of the bars. "Oh. Well...it's Ichirio Yomi." If Yomi expected more from Ran, he was again surprised. His question asked, the white assassin had returned to his task of walking with determined stoicism. He didn't really need the bars; his balance had returned after the fourth trip down the length on his first day. His hands tingled with the urge to discover if he could weild his bland as quickly and as well as he had regained his ability to walk. But suspicion didn't set in until his third day. § § § § § It was crushed. Nothing remained of the aluminum bar that had once been the shocked assassin's guide as he performed his daily therapy. He was angry. He couldn't recall why, perhaps it was another evasive answer to his question about the location of his team. It could have been that he was sure that something was wrong with the fact that he was up and walking, not to mention having kept himself occupied with advanced kata in his room. He hadn't broken a sweat or taken a harsh breath through the entire form; his body was in perfect condition. He should be weak as a...kitten. Instead he had crushed a thick aluminum pole as if it were nothing. His body had returned to normal....well, beyond in a matter of days instead of the months of excruciating therapy he should be going through. He felt stronger, moved faster...felt better than he had in his life. "What did they do to me?" Yomi's voice was hushed...and infinitely sad. "That, Fujimiya-san, is the one question I cannot answer." ::owari one:: |
