His name is Arago Hunt, and he was in an accident. He's lucky to be alive.
That's what they tell him, when he wakes up. The walls of the hospital are pale and colorless, the sheets scratchy and rough. The room smells of drugs and death, the putrid stench concealed under the thick unrelenting smell of chemicals. His head pounds, the beat of his heart drowning out all else but for the repetitive thump of his roaring blood.
His name is Arago Hunt, they tell him, and their voices are empty; their words disconnected from the false sympathy they show him. He's in the hospital. Does he remember how he got there?
No, he whispers at them, weakly. His voice is hoarse, his throat sore. When he speaks, pain flares throughout his body, spiking down his neck viciously. It's as though he's been screaming for hours and hours until his throat gave out, and for some reason he finds this thought to ring true. He had screamed. Denied. Begged even, his voice a mere whisper as he pleaded with the other, don't do this, don't go, this isn't what I—
The memory fades. The doctors tell him this is normal. Traumatizing memories are usually ignored and forgotten, to keep the mind intact. One day, he may recover them. They tell him not to stress, that doing so will impede his recovery. The memories will return in their own time, and trying to force them will only hurt him further.
He asks for a mirror.
Confused, they obey. The mirror is old and chipped, well-worn from the thousands of hands that had held it, the reflective surface polished and bright. As he stares at his clear reflection, he thinks something seems off. His fingers—long and pale and scarred—brush the glass as he studies his face. So familiar, and yet… there is something wrong about it.
He touches the shock of white hair and thinks, too pale. He brushes a hand over his face and finds no faults, but when he touches his eyes the feeling rises again, stronger than before. His clear sight is disorienting, the shade of his eyes and the lack of frames even more so.
Something is wrong, he thinks, but for the life of him cannot figure it out.
They take the mirror from him and push him back to the bed. The sky has grown dark, and the hour is late. He needs sleep. Everything will be fine if he sleeps, they assure him softly. For some reason, he doesn't believe their words. He feels, somewhere deep inside, in the small part of him that is still screaming—nothing will ever be fine again.
Just sleep, they tell him again, over and over, and he can hear the stress and irritation in their voices. He smiles, and he says: Okay. Feeling nothing. Feeling everything.
The lights are clicked off, the room plunged into darkness. He stares at the pale ceiling and pale walls and waits for slumber. It doesn't come. His thoughts are a storm, roiling and destructive. They keep him awake, tormenting him. He thinks of the mirror, of the not-right reflection and his pale scarred fingers. The feeling from before rises within him, a sense of wrongness that clogs his throat and stills the air in his chest.
A restlessness grabs hold of him, and he feels confined in this small room. The walls appear like the bars of a prison cell to his tired mind, seeming to close in on him. He wrests free from his covers, wincing when he jars his wounds, and rests his bare feet quietly against the chilled tile floor.
He sits up and walks noiselessly to the window near his bed, deathly silent. He can't find fresh air; he can't go outside in this ruined state, but he can do this much at least. He gazes out the window with his too-clear eyes, down at city lights and up at faded stars.
He looks at his twisted—wrong—reflection in the glass, and tries to remember. He'd pleaded. He was angry. He'd cried.
Why, exactly, is he in this hospital? He doesn't know, and he thinks maybe that is for the best. What he does know is dark, cold, and terrifying. He doesn't want to watch as it gets worse.
He rests his fingers on the glass of the window, on his twisted reflection and the gleaming city lights. They shine brighter than even the stars, small specks of gold shining vividly in the darkness. It lets what little light remains in the room throw his reflection back him.
He stares at his face, studies the shape of the jaw and the way his hair falls over his eyes. He doesn't recognize it, and yet he does. Either way, it doesn't sit right with him, this reflection. It's not his. A darkness claws at his chest as watches, deep and bottomless. Later, he will recognize the feeling as guilt.
For now, he stares out, and says—
My name is Arago Hunt.
—hoping that maybe, if he says it enough, he might start believing in it.
A/N: Wrote this a while back, and decided to clean it up a bit and post it on here. Few more older fics will be coming soon too.
Any thoughts?