Hello, everyone! I have returned from my several-week-long hibernation! WHOOPEE!
Just to let y'all know: during that time of not posting stuff, I was actually working on this piece. I was reading some stories on Wattpad and noticed a few of them that were about varying members of Pentatonix losing their memory. As some of you know, I have a fleeting story about Mitch falling and hitting his head, thus losing his memory (found in Scomiche Oneshots), but after posting it I realized just how broad of a topic I was trying to cover and how abrupt it was. I started writing this as an updated replacement, and then realized that all of the plot wasn't going to fit into a simple oneshot. This story then flew from my brain to my keyboard to my screen. The beginning of the mini-oneshot And Together We Are is used as an opener here (that oneshot will also soon be replaced).
I will say that I'm honestly interested in where this story is going and have no intentions of leaving it hanging (like, say, The Forest of Orbis. Sorry y'all...for now its updates are going to be infrequent and random), but it takes me a while to knock out a single chapter because, besides this introduction chapter, all of the chapters are going to be really, REALLY long. So it'll take more than a week to update this sucker. But don't worry; the update will come. I'm too in love with this concept to let it wriggle through my fingers.
I'M ON WATTPAD NOW YAY! If it's easier for any of you guys to read my stories on there, please do! I'm still setting everything up though, since I'm not used to the style and everything, but all of my work will be posted on there soon.
Humble Beginnings might not start for a while, due to factual issues. I'll talk to you guys about that story late on, but for now, the prologue I have written is going to stay unpublished. Thanks to you if you read all of this and the above (it's what I get for taking such a long break).
Alrighty then, my readers, buckle your seatbelts. I gotta let you guys know this; I am going to put these characters through hell. And y'all are gonna be mad at me at times. I wanted to write this story to show how difficult it really is to recuperate from memory loss. I will admit I sped up Mitch's physical healing time a little (or maybe a little more than a little; he's up and walking, though painfully, in two months), but that's all. There will be times where there's fluff, there will be times where there's sex (I'll give you guys a huge disclaimer if you're not into that stuff, so please read the A/N's), there will be times when it gets rough, there will be times when...
Well. I shouldn't get ahead of myself. I should let you find out instead.
Let's begin, shall we?
While merely lounging around his shared apartment watching TV, the idea came to Mitch that he should take a shower. Not a long one, of course, those were reserved for specific times (like right after the brunette had accidentally drunk too much and was vomiting left and right, or when he was particularly stressed out and needed to get away from the rest of humanity...actually, never mind. Mitch took super long showers all the time), but a swift one just to wash off the invisible film of yuck that was layered on his skin, the kind of yuck that you feel after doing nothing all day and not showering at the time you usually would.
Mitch's eyes flicked to his cell phone. Without a second thought he scooped it up and clicked the home button to see the time: 5:39. He was supposed to go sing a duet with his best friend Scott in a few hours, which meant he'd have to dress nicely, which meant that yes, he would have to take a shower, and he'd have to make it unpleasantly quick.
Sighing, the small singer reached for the television remote, shut off the screen, and heaved himself from his spot on the couch. As he walked up the stairs, he wondered over normal things; would he look good in that oversized white blazer he owned? And Scott was picking him up, right? Oh, and Kirstie had told him that she and Avi were thinking about contacting Lindsey to do another video. Her violin and Kevin's cello blended together wonderfully.
The brunette absentmindedly undressed, turned on the hot water, and slipped into the shower as the bathroom mirror began to fog. He closed his eyes and tilted his head, reveling in the heat of the steam.
For the next few minutes, Mitch took his shower in peace, sometimes singing aloud to practice, sometimes not. After ten bundles of sixty seconds passed he decided that he had better get out before his fingers transformed into prunes. His mind once again wandered to what he would wear.
It was then that the countertenor realized that oh, shit. Scott was supposed to text Mitch when he was close to the apartment, and he had wittingly left his phone downstairs.
"Dammit." He said quietly, wrapping a white towel around his thin frame so he wouldn't be walking around naked. Sure his feet were a little wet, but he trusted himself not to slip. Honestly, who really did slip and fall and crack their head open when leaving the shower? TV over dramatized everything.
That thought and the mantra I will not fall, I will not fall, I will not fall led Mitch out into the cool hallway floor, and he carefully padded his way towards the top of the stairs (and, despite his chant, kept his wary eyes on his feet).
Right as he was thinking with some glee, Wow, I'm really not going to fall, he took his first step and his eyes left his toes.
That's about when everything went to hell.
Mitch's gaze was locked on the couch, all the way down the stairs, so he didn't notice when his back foot slid slightly. He did notice when his front foot began to slide as well, and reached out a hand to grab the railing. For some reason, however, the cold metal of the rail never touched his fingertips. This sudden knowledge made Mitch's thoughts go from calm to panicked within the span of a split-second. He sensed his body slipping, and tried to lunge for the rail, but it was too late.
One moment Mitch was at the top of the stairs and in moment number two he was falling down the stairs. Trying to maintain some sort of control, he twisted his body so that he could claw at the steps and regain balance. The motion caused his head to snap back further than it had been originally.
A sickening CRACK! sound echoed in the following instance. The countertenor felt a horrible pain in his head at the same time stars and colorful spots covered his line of sight. Then he couldn't feel his head. Or his hands, or his feet, or his legs, or his arms. Everything was going white. Fuzzy. Out of focus.
Since his body was now slack, Mitch's head connected to the hard stairs once more, in the same area as it previously had. The singer couldn't comprehend the pain, though, the white fuzzy darkness was dragging him down down down and soon he couldn't see or feel anything anymore.
And Mitch Grassi passed out.
Something next to him was beeping.
It wasn't a comforting beep, if such a thing in the world existed. The sound it made was shrill, high-pitched, constant and insistent, as if its sole job was to notify everybody around it that yup it was still beeping, carry on with your life, I'll just be here beep beep beep beeping until somebody tells me to stop.
He really wanted to tell the beeping to stop.
Seriously. It was starting to make his ears hurt.
He also really wanted to open his eyes. But for some reason, he couldn't. His eyelids wouldn't let him. They felt sticky, like tape, so maybe they had become so sticky that they were stuck shut. In time he'd open them. Just not yet. If tape was ripped from its surface, sometimes it took some of its surface with it, and he honestly didn't want to tear off his eyelashes or something equally drastic by opening his eyes.
So that would have to wait.
Then he switched from wondering whether or not he could open his eyes to whether or not he could move.
Immediately he knew that moving was impossible. Completely and utterly impossible. Because he couldn't feel a single thing. All of his body was numb (or tight), from his toes to knees to torso to shoulders to neck to...
Ow.
His head wasn't numb. At least, not all of it was; there was a small point on the very back that burned a little. Ow ow ow. That didn't feel good. If he could get up and move or at the bare minimum open his eyes he would run to the nearest ocean and dump his head in it. Maybe the burn would go away.
He didn't know when he had woken, but he could see sleep beckoning to him from behind his eyes, and exhaustion climbing up his unfeeling skin to settle over him like a cocoon. As soon as the tiredness began weighing him down, the beeping slowed a bit.
Good. It was hurting his ears.
Black clouded him. He tried to clutch at the edges of consciousness, the tiniest bit of curiosity whispering in its quietest voice the simplest question on earth. He could do nothing to address it, though, or answer it in any way. Far too much effort. As he fell into sleep, the sound of the beeping abruptly stopped.
It was rather difficult to say what exactly time was. Or what it meant to him. He knew that it moved, whatever it was, and as it moved things changed.
For instance, as more time moved in whichever way that it did, he felt new things.
The first thing he felt, actually felt, not heard inside of his head, was a sense of cold. It was cold on his face, and it was cold in the space between his fingertips and his elbows, wherever they were. But he still felt it. And when he noticed this at some point in time, a burst of excitement didn't follow. He simply found out he could do so one day. That was it.
Soon after he felt cold, he felt his body coming back to him. His body went the opposite of numb; in chunks, it woke up and restarted and he got them back. Even sooner, he was able to distinguish what part of his body was where, and if it was cold or not. And then, sooner still, he was able to feel air whistling through his nose, dance past his larynx, skid by his trachea, before finally filling his lungs. The air, he realized later, had a smell as well as a feel. It smelled sharp, though, so he didn't like to smell it if he could get away with it.
That damned beeping still kept on. As time went by, he grew interested at how it always beeped whenever he smelled the air, or how it beeped slightly differently just before he went dark. It still kept on so long as he kept on. How interesting.
Less and less time passed as a new discovery was made. Sometimes he discovered several things at once. By the end of a time that he had the vague inclination was rather long, he could smell and knew the scent of everything in the room (stale and plain), he could taste and wondered what it would be like to actually put food in his mouth (yes, he recalled what food was after a while), he could hear and as this asset improved he was more easily able to tune out the beeping, and he could feel. He could feel so much more than he could before. Cold, for sure, and hot (only once had he felt this. It was a shocking contrast to cold he wasn't sure he favored or not) and other things besides what he identified as temperature, like the fabric that his body was wrapped in, or the hair that hung next to his eye that itched like crazy.
His eyes. He still couldn't open them. They were still stuck shut. This bothered him a lot. He wanted to open them, he wanted to see, but every time he tried a weight so heavy he couldn't describe it shoved the energy and effort it took to do so and he had no choice other than to succumb to it. All he saw was the color of behind his eyes, and it was pure black.
However, he remembered. He remembered what to call the fabric that he was tied up in, that was a sheet. And that sharp smell was bleach. And the thing his sometimes aching, sometimes not aching head rested against was called a pillow. He could attach the words inside of his head to things, too, he'd figured out how swiftly; the weight that consumed him was sleep, or tiredness, and the slight rush that swirled in him when he remembered or discovered something fresh was pride.
This continued, him just existing and time just going by, for he honestly didn't know how long. Nothing seemed to change, and if they did, it went on while he was asleep. He couldn't tell. Sometimes he wanted to be awake and feeling whenever something might change. Sometimes he worried it might be too much for him. Sometimes he wished to pick his body up from what he'd recalled as a bed (it wasn't that comfortable, he could admit that now) and open his eyes, and see change.
It didn't happen for some length of time.
He got lonely. He ached for people, or company, or somebody who cared. Because after some length of time passed, he became aware, more than just awake, remembered more nouns and adjectives and verbs and things. He remembered a thing called people. He wished for them, whoever they were.
Maybe they could dull the pain in his head that was more prominent as more time passed.
And then, while he wished badly for people, lying alone in his bed with his face and arms cold..something changed.
While he was awake and his eyes still closed, a door opened. Somebody had opened a door. Then they closed the door. It must be people. It must be. People walked and talked and stood up and saw but more than anything people opened doors and that was what had just happened.
That somebody who was part of people took in a deep, shuddering breath. He heard them do it.
Nothing happened for a moment. That moment ended when that somebody scraped something against the floor (a chair, most likely) and very suddenly that somebody was close. He could feel them. He could feel how close their body was.
Somebody, slowly and gently, held his hand.
The hand was warm. It wasn't anything like the extreme hot and cold he had felt before. It was warm and it was holding his and it felt so right. Holding this somebody's hand felt so right. Their hands fit together perfectly, even though his was a lot smaller than the somebody's, their hands fit together like...what was the word...what were they called...puzzle pieces.
A feeling he knew but had never felt before entered his body. He scrambled around trying to find a word for it.
Safe. He felt safe.
"Hi, Mitch."
Like time couldn't get any better, not only did the somebody hold his hand, but they talked, too! Oh, and their voice was so nice. Not too deep, but enough that it carried an undertone of a rumbling hum. He desperately wished that they would talk again, that the somebody would speak, so he could hear their voice again. It was like chocolate to his ears, if that made any sense.
"It's..." They paused and took in another breath. But though they seemed to be trying to prevent it, their next words broke. "It's Scott."
The name rang a faint bell. Unfortunately, that bell resided in the back of his mind, right where the burning pain was, and hearing and vaguely recognizing it hurt. It didn't stop him from wanting to hear it again, however.
And who was Mitch?
"The doctors haven't let anybody visit you for the past few days. They said you needed time to adjust. And they didn't let me in your actual room until now." The pretty voice that belonged to Scott caught and he laughed weakly. "Your parents are so nice to me. They let me visit you first because...because I'm selfish."
His parents? Doctors? Days? He had parents and doctors watching over him and days had passed? How many? Why?
"I'm sorry it took me so long to see you." A warm finger brushed the hair from his closed eye, and the itch went away. The finger was soft and it must've belonged to Scott's voice. "But I'm here now. I'm here now and I'm not leaving, ever, okay, Mitchie? You take all the time you need to get better. I'll be right here."
This was making absolutely no sense at all. Scott's voice was nice, but the words it said were confusing. He didn't understand more than half of them or what they meant. Some small part of him wanted to ask, however, a larger part of him just wanted to lie here and listen and possibly go back to sleep. Listening for this long was a lot of work. How did people listen for so long?
Wetness touched his hand, along with more warmth. This was so new. Scott's voice brought so much newness. So much change. The wetness trailed through his thin, small fingers, sliding past his wrist and suddenly it disappeared. It was most likely on the bed now. He didn't have to worry about it since more and more wetness touched his hand, and then a few drops on his arm, and the warmth, the warmth of somebody's lips were pressing against his palm, and all at once he knew it was the new tone.
"The doctors want to pull the plug in less than two weeks." Scott's pretty nice chocolate voice was breaking again. What had happened to make it shatter so horribly? "Your parents aren't going to let them, though. The band isn't going to let them. You're still in there, Mitch, I know you are. You just have to hang on. Please hang on. Please."
Too much. Now he knew why despite wishing for change, he'd feared it would be too much. Too much too fast and he didn't understand. Question marks swirled in his brain, right in the back, inside of the part that burned. And it hurt. Listening hurt. So that was why people couldn't listen for so long, it was because it hurt and none of the words made sense anyway.
"Please come back, Mitch..."
Ah, there it was. The tiredness pulling over him. For once, he agreed with sleep; it was time to go dark right now, the pain of listening almost wasn't worth it. But he really liked Scott's voice, even if it was cracked, and he wanted to hear it again. Maybe...maybe Scott's voice would come back. And his warmth too.
The beeping began to slow, ever so slightly. Time to go dark.
...and who was Mitch?