Blood On My Hands
By Flying Star
Disclaimer: Program lockout, in other words I don't own Code Lyoko. Antefilms and Moonscoop hold that right. Lucky dogs.
1
Based on the Mr. Puck episode. The concept is simple. What if Aelita had not deactivated the tower in time?
Italic: Emphasis
" " : Talking
1 : Section Breaks
1
It hurts, alot.
Not the bump on my head, or the burns lacing my hands.
But the fact that he was dead, and that I'd killed him.
Hurts so bad.
Had I only known, what was to happen hours prior, if only...
I hurt.
The prominent thought had been running through my mind as consciousness slowly returned to my senses. My mind trying to identify the source of the aches and pains wracking my body, vaguely realizing that I was on something cold and hard.
Definitely not the soft leather seat that I'd previously been occupying, it felt more like I was on...
Groaning softly, my hand subconsciously slid to the back of my head.
White hot pain throbbed there, and my hands felt like they were on fire. The obvious sources of my discomfort at least.
But why did I hurt?
" Jeremie?"
Her soft, hesitant voice pulled me from my painful slumber, eyes opening to see her hovering over me, her face a mixture of sadness and relief as she backed away a few steps, looking over her shoulder.
I let my head roll to the left, and then the right, scanning the room for the rest of my friends.
I found Ulrich standing near the lift, his expression unreadable from my postion, which I now knew was the floor of the supercalculator room.
Why I was there, I had no clue.
I saw Yumi a moment later, farther away and crouching over something that I couldn't quite make out.
Groggy confusion changed into puzzled alertness as I noticed someone was missing from our group.
" Jeremie?" Aelita was looking at me again, despair still written on her face as she asked, " Do you - do you know what happened?"
I shook my head in response.
Nothing, I could remember nothing after my conversation with Ulrich and Odd, everything a blank void.
Maybe it should've stayed that way.
Hurts to feel.
The way she'd looked, they'd looked as I managed to sit up. Their silence more damning than any accusations they could've thrown at me.
And then Yumi stood up, and I saw him.
Odd was lying almost haphazardly on the ground, his body still half curled, as if warding off something...
...or someone.
I stumbled to my feet, heading to his body in a daze. Only distantly realizing I was asking Aelita, or maybe it was Yumi, as to who had killed him.
Hurts to see.
The scene was gruesome.
Just looking down at his burned remains, I could tell he was beyond help, the external damage a testament to how violent his death had been. Any attempt at revival would accomplish nothing, though later on Yumi did tell me that Ulrich and her had tried.
No one, however, would answer me as Yumi turned to Ulrich, gesturing to the brown-haired boy, who seemed in as much of a daze as I, as he walked up to her.
Without exchanging a word, the two bent down, grasping Odd by the arms and legs, bringing him to the lift. I followed close behind, unable to understand their silence.
Aelita, not used to human death, kept her distance, trying to avoid looking at Odd's deceased form as she walked next to me.
It was on the way through the factory, that I began to see the entire scope of the damage inflicted by Odd's mystery killer. Whole steel pillars were bent nearly in half, wires demolished, and all sorts of debris lie screwn about. The sheer power expended, to do so much damage, was shocking.
Transported to the hospital, I meandered in the waiting room, waiting for the results in uncomfortable silence. Yumi, Ulrich, and Aelita remained in the hallway, talking in hushed tones that I couldn't make out, but for some reason knew pertained to me. Their need to exclude me from their conversation only further fueling the feelings of dread crawling over me.
And then he entered, the doctor. Swathed in the medical scrubs used for helping the sick and dying. His eyes told the tale even before the news left his lips. Odd had been pronounced dead on arrival.
Even knowing beforehand that Odd was long since dead, the news still struck me hard. Excusing myself, I brushed past my friends, leaving the hospital and returning to my dorm room.
There I sat on my bed, shaken, unmoving untl they arrived a little while later.
Hurts to know.
Yumi came in first, followed by Ulrich, and then Aelita. Sitting down around the room, Yumi's gaze went to mine.
She didn't mince words.
She told me everything, about how XANA had taken control of me, and forced me to kidnap Aelita. That after confronting me, Odd had opted to stay behind, to keep my XANA possessed self away from the supercalculator room, to provide a distraction. He wanted to make sure the others made it to Lyoko safely. Yumi continued by saying that after she'd been pulled from Lyoko by me, she'd found Odd writhing in my grasp and had tried to save him. Only to get injured herself by being tossed into a wall by me.
It was then that I noticed how she kept leaning against Ulrich, and saw the splash of dried crimson still staining the back of her head as she turned briefly to him, before her eyes went to her lap.
Her voice lowered to almost a whisper as she told me that she had regained consciousness just in time to witness Odd's body convulsing in my grasp, the boy screaming in mindless pain.
My eyes wandered to my smouldering hands, knowing now why they'd hurt so bad, my mind coming to the grim conclusion before Yumi had even finished.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Yumi turn away from me, the dark-haired girl swallowing hard before continuing her tale.
Aelita, Yumi said, had obviously entered the code a few minutes afterwards, XANA's power leaving my body, leaving me to lay across the body of the one I'd killed.
And all of this, had happened just minutes before I'd awoke in my confused state.
Breathing heavily now, I glanced down at my shaking hands as I realized I'd killed one of my best friends.
Murdered him, with my own two hands.
A knock on my dorm door, halted the rest of the conversation, tearing me from my shock. It was the authorites and Mr. Delmas, wanting to know the circumstances of Odd's death.
The inquiries, questions on how he'd died, I couldn't even begin to answer.
But Aelita, Ulrich, and Yumi answered for me, as if they rehearsed it, giving the authorities answers that were not far from the truth. Warping the story enough to make them believe that Odd had come into accidental contact with some exposed wires from the school's boiler room, and that I had tried to wrest him free.
The burns on my hands, from XANA's power, made it easier for them to believe that I'd tried to help him.
Ulrich and Yumi had even, I found out later, purposefully and carefully had removed the insulation from a few wires in the boiler room before they came to see me, to make the story match the explanation. A dangerous tactic that could have easily backfired, but didn't. Looks like they though of everything...
Except that I did kill him, that fact cannot be changed.
I didn't go to Odd's funeral, I couldn't bear to look his parents in the face. To have to wear a false mask of sorrow in front of everyone. To pretend that I'm grieving for being unable to save him, while knowing that I was the one who took his life.
I should've seen it coming, tried to resist. I knew XANA had tried to take over Odd and Ulrich, and should've realized and prepared for the possibility of it coming after me. And to make matters worse, my reluctance to fight in Lyoko, to build resistance against XANA had left me weak, powerless, unable to stop it from weaving it's way into my brain, taking me over, making me...
Hurts to think...
My friends tried to help me, to reassure me that I had not willfully done what I'd done. At least in the beginning. But they just don't understand, it was my hands that delivered the fatal jolt, my hands that took his life!
Teachers look at me with sympathy, that is when I actually go to class, unknowing that the one before them has taken a human life.
I've lost track of time. Classes, conversations, and everything else now a blur. My body taking me through the days with a lost sense of purpose, my mind hardly recognizing anything but the basic neccesities needed to keep my body going. Becoming numb, turning inward.
I've received a few e-mails from Aelita telling me that Yumi and Ulrich now take turns with helping her in Lyoko, one of them managing the supercalculator at all times. And that she's begun the process of deciphering Franz Hopper's files that I embedded in the supercalculator, though how she found them, I have no clue. But at least I know she's safe, they'll take care of her better than I did.
And here I sit, my room now my sanctuary. I rarely leave it for anything anymore. I have no reason to. And I don't want anyone to see...
The blood staining my hands that won't scrub free, no matter how many times I clean them. A part of my brain reminds me that I never drew actual blood from my friend, rational logic telling me that the blood was not and would never be there.
From a psychological standpoint, I know I'm suffering some sort of delusional disfunction. My eyes making me see that which doesn't exist.
Hurts to live...
I can't face them, not after what I did.
I won't be a coward though, I won't take my life, for that would be the easy way out.
Hurts more than anything...
There's blood staining my hands that will never come clean.
End of part one
1
Why do I hurt the ones I love? Why do I torment my favorite characters? I'm not really sure, but after watching that episode, I felt an overwhelming urge to do so. And surprisingly enough, I actually have a second chapter to this. Let's just say that after wallowing in self-pity for so long, that Jeremie receives a visitor he never expected to see. It should be up within a matter of days. Anyway, if you read, please review. I like people's thoughts.