Hi all, this is the sequel to "The Scars I bear." Although it is not necessary that you read that story first, it would put the characters into perspective more. This is located around 7 years from then. Hope you'll enjoy it! Let me know what you think. And I'm pretty sure most of you can guess what's wrong with Shizuru. Winks. I'll let you all decide :D As usual reviews or thoughts would be appreciated. Happy New Year!

The sun must be telling the moon stories in whispers. With every passing cloud a sigh from the heavens in their conversation. The streets and the lamps swirled around in a mess of colors, each screaming out at her. Looming over. "We are coming. Await us. Run. Hide. Who do you think you are? How dare you trespass?" She ducked her head and weaved through the crowds of people. "Could they hear her? Weren't they all government agents? Where was she going?"

Someone grabbed her arm. She turned to see the face of a monster and screamed. She tried to tug her arm lose, clawed at the monster in front of her. Grimy wrinkled skin, green eyes the color of alien goo, emanciated with ribs showing out of the side. She, no, it was trying to convert her into one of them. "Nonononono… Get away! Get away from me." She swung her arm around, "I will not be one of you," she spat out. But the grip around her was iron tight and her world swung in dizziness. They were forcing something into her mouth. Something bitter. "No!" she spat it out. She needed something to wash away this sickness in her mouth. As though it was like magic, a bottle appeared before her. She reached for the bottle, gulped down a mouthful, swallowed, and yet the bitterness remained. If anything the liquid tasted metallic to her. The monster was dragging her, through the streets. The rough asphalt hitting the front of her shoes. She heard it mutter, "Come on."

What should she do? Run, but how does one escape this? Her heart was racing as the clammy feeling of ice cold fear ran through her. Why won't they just leave her alone? What did they want? Maybe if she pretended she was dead and it would give up on her. She let herself go limp, silently praying it would release her. She heard the grunt of the monster and yet its grip remained firmly around her. Maybe it didn't believe her. She'll just stay like this, until it gave up. It must be bringing her to its den. Better to pretend to be dead. Who knew what else awaited. She shut her eyes. The darkness, it called out to her, telling her that perhaps ignorance was bliss.

"You have got to be kidding me. Did you miss the memo? I told you not to overwork her. How many hours has she been at it?" I refrained from screaming into the phone.

"Look there was a case, it was last minute and she needed to be in for the surgery. It was only a single missed dose, she said she'll be fine once she gets home. That it was nothing. I mean she's the best heart surgeon we've got in here, we didn't have a choice. If we had a choice, we would've cut her some slack."

"She had medications in her bag. Was it so difficult to spare her 1 minute to take a single pill. Am I not being clear? Also it was probably two doses. If it was twelve hours in surgery and her mad rush around the clinic on her normal hours, that makes it two goddamned doses. You couldn't think about her health for a minute, that's what I'm hearing you say."

"On behalf of the clinic, I would like to sincerely apologize. We will be more careful in the future. Also, it was a complicated heart procedure, it was 12 hours straight. We couldn't stop in the middle of the operation. I understand if she's not feeling well tomorrow. Please tell her, she doesn't have to come in tomorrow or even the day after. I'll have the other staff take over."

The woman on the bed turned and let out a soft moan, tossed restlessly. Her honey blond hair spiked out in disarray.

"Yeah yeah. " I lost all interest in shouting over the phone, when I saw her move. "Whatever. Bye." Seriously? I could listen to the lame excuses all day. And then I'll grill them and fry their excuses like yakitori, skewer them into little bits. But I didn't want to spoil whatever working relationship she had with them.

I pressed the down call button and placing the portable phone on the tabletop. I moved quickly to sit on the bed.

I ran my hand over her forehead, sweeping her hair to one side, tucking the wisp behind her ear. With a random tee shirt that I picked off the floor, wiped away the sweat on her brow. The room was freezing cold, yet the beads of perspiration ran freely. It pained me to see her in so much distress, but there was nothing I could do. Her eyes were closed, her face slack and relaxed, yet from the disturbed tossing and the occasional groan, I could tell whatever dreams she was having were not the least pleasant. It was surprising what time had done to someone like her.

"Shizuru," I whispered. "Hey."

She turned over on the bed, "No, no. Not true. Don't…" she whispered.

"You're fine, you're safe. It's okay." I wanted to wake her, but I stilled my impulse to shake her.

She must have been so exhausted after an extended 12hrs in surgery on top of her usual hours. Yet, to be caught in such nightmares, I didn't know which was more tiring. To wake her or not? It seemed like the devil and the deep blue sea.

I finally settled on letting it run its course. Call it the coward's escape, but I'd rather she be caught in the nightmare than to be awake and yelling at me as though I was the monster in the room. That would be almost too much to bear.

Getting off the soft sheets, I treaded over to her bag and fished out her phone. The battery life was a glaring two percent so I plugged it into the charging port. I flipped through her songs to pick out one of her favorite more soothing jazz pieces. Lowering the music till it was a soft delicate background; I left the phone on the bed stand and went to prepare dinner in case she woke hungry.

The kitchen felt glaringly empty. I debated over what to cook and figured something nutritious and easy to go down would be about right. Porridge seemed the most fitting. Tossing rice into the cooker, I heaped boiling water on it. My raid through the freezer turned up two pieces of chicken breast which I promptly ran under the tap before tossed them into the microwave. Upon selecting the defrost option, the lights lit on and with a humming sound, the Lazy Susan in the machine started going round. Two minutes. Two whole minutes, passed as I stood there feeling helpless. I caught my gaze going back to the room with its ajar door.

Sighing, I retrieved the flopping pieces of lukewarm chicken breasts, dashed some soy sauce and seasame oil over it. Leaving it to marinate in the bowl, I rummaged around in another drawer. Retrieving a sprig of spring onions, I started chopping them up with a vengeance. Mincing the pieces smaller and smaller.

Whipping out a burnished pot, i dashed a tablespoon of oil in, set it on the stove while I tossed the pieces of chicken in, taking time to sear the edges. While people were fine with bland tasteless shreds of chicken in their porridge, I was a firm believer that a bowl of porridge was an already sad dish to eat. If anything, the chicken should be decently tasteful. Once the pieces of chicken were nicely seared, I turned the fire off and checked the rice pot. Not done.

So I washed my hands under the tap and decided that it wouldn't hurt to check in on her again.

Standing in the doorway with my apron still on, I watched her. There was something impossibly vulnerable about her curled up in the middle of the bed fast asleep, unaware of the world.

I noted that at least she seemed to have fallen into a state of peaceful rest. No more fitful turning, just the quiet serenity of someone at peace. Time must have ticked by like that, because the lid of the rice cooker trembling in its place shook me out of the reverie. I turned away, hefted up a scoop and started spooning heaps of mushy rice into the pot by the stove. Adding a dash of water, I turned the heat to low and put the glass lid back over the pot.

Feeling decidedly better, I powered up my laptop and sat myself on the sofa. While I would have preferred the bed, I didn't want to risk rousing her. Opening Solidworks on the computer, I loaded one of the files on my desktop. Despite finishing a degree in Life Science, I found myself drawn innately towards engineering and design. In the end, I ended up designing and innovating medical devices, the best of both worlds.

Currently I was working on a flexible thermoelectric module that could run cold when plugged into a power outlet. If i succeeded in working out the finer details, I would integrate this technology into ankle and knee supports. Then the world could kiss goodbye to cold compresses that were chunky and constantly falling off. Kiss goodbye to icepacks that needlessly dripped water over everything, making the floor a mess and annoying an already injured person into cleaning up before he or she slipped on the treacherous pool of condensed water and found themselves with more injuries than they began with.

The problem lay in the design, of channeling the cold and heat into two separate sections that wouldn't interfere with each other. Also current designs were not flexible enough to be integrated into the kind of soft supports that someone would want to wear comfortably. But that didn't mean it was impossible.

It was difficult to concentrate with the soft jazz music coming from the room. I was tempted to jam my earphones in but I wanted to be there when she got up. I considered it undying love that I left my earphones on the table by its lonesome self.

We often ribbed at each other because of our stark differences in music. While I preferred post alternative rock, Shizuru was more of a classical and jazz music person. And if there was a genre I hated, it would've been classical and jazz. Till today, I can't decide which I disliked more.

It was close to two hours later before I heard rustling sounds of the sheets. Setting my laptop down, I cautiously approached the room, careful to not go to near the bed.

"Shizuru?"

Her eyes blinked open bearily. The dark circles under it a testimony to her exhaustion.

I saw the look of relief in her eyes as she made me out. Immediately, I rushed nearer and picked up her hand in mine.

"Hey," I said softly.

"Natsuki, it's you. Were you…" she coughed. "I…how did I get here?"

I took the cup of water that I'd placed by the bedside into her hands.

She pushed herself up and took a sip, cleared her throat.

"Found you on the way home. Had to lug you back."

She smiled, the kind of soft smile I was so used to seeing. "You're not it. I'm so glad to see your face." She reached out with one hand and cupped my face with it. Leaning forward she touched her lips to my cheek.

I held her in my arms for a couple of seconds as she rested against my embrace. "Sorry to break up the moment, but you need to take your meds."

I picked the brown tablet off the medication box by the table and passed it to her.

Without hesitation, she popped a tablet and swallowed it. "Thanks. I'm sorry. I was so busy. I didn't mean to miss it. I thought it would be fine. Sometimes I miss a dose or two and nothing happens."

"Yeah I know. But you were tired and stressed, that would have probably factored in."

"There was a surgery. This guy with heart problems. His vessels were so fragile they kept breaking up. That's why we took so long."

"I know, I called the hospital."

She gave me a horrified look. "Oh no, you didn't."

"As a matter of fact, I did."

"How many of them are dead?" she asked seriously.

"3 of them. Your assistant, the boss and the random small fry who answered the phone. I barbequed them and skewered them onto small little wooden sticks in my mind."

"Natsuki!"

I smiled wryly at her, "Nothing happened. I just called and told them off nicely, without shouting and with minimal cursing. Don't worry, I didn't want to affect your working relationship with them. I held back."

"Oh. That's good then. What happened to me? I remember I was walking back and the lamps, the streets, they were chasing after me."

Catching the back of her head in my hands, I brought her into an embrace and settled my head on her shoulders. "Ah, well I went to get you because you texted that you were on the way back. And I saw you looking rather disorientated two blocks or so from here. When I took your arm, you started screaming at me."

She closed her eyes. "The monster. It was you. I mean, I thought it was you. I…I'm so sorry Natsuki."

"No, no, don't apologize. I tried to give you your medicine, you spat it out. So I dropped one of the sleeping pills in my bottle of water and gave it to you. You struggled almost all the way back home. But you fell asleep somewhere along the way."

"Pretend to be dead," she murmured.

"You what?"

"I thought you were a monster, I pretended to be dead. Didn't fall asleep till much later."

"Oh, I see." How afraid must she have been to have to pretend to be dead. I couldn't fathom that kind of fear. Still, I could see the traces of guilt making its way onto her face and decided to change the subject.. "Are you hungry?"

"Not really."

"I made porridge, would be good if you ate something," I suggested. "I am guessing your last meal was probably a long time ago."

"I don't even remember anymore. I guess a small bowl will do."

I wonder if she said that just to allay my feelings, but I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Her face was slightly on the pale side and a meal would do her wonders. I left to prepared two bowls, sprinkled some spring onions on the top, poured some soy sauce onto a small dish and brought it into the room. I found her sitting upright, resting against the headboard of the bed, phone in hand. The room was now silent with no jazz music floating in the air.

I slid the tray of food across the bed. "Oh thank God. I almost died from the music."

She sent me an offended look. "It's awesome."

"Yea, yea about as awesome a trip to hell and back."

"And still you turned it on for me," she pointed out.

"Doesn't mean I have to like it," I retorted.

She looked away. "Thanks Natsuki."

"It's okay." I flopped down gently next to her. Waited as she looked at the opposite corner of the room. "Porridge?" I suggested tentatively for lack of a better thing to say. The awkward silence hung in the air.

To my horror when she turned around, I saw pools of liquid welling up in those crimson eyes. "I…I hate this. I don't want to be like this." She brought her fingers up to press against her eyes.

"Look at me. It's not your fault," I said gently.

"It's…It's like a monster living inside me. If I could be stronger, maybe this wouldn't have happened."

"You know it's not your fault. Sometimes these things happen."

"I just. I just hate it. Always being on medication. Needing you to look out for me."

I gathered her clenched fist into my hands. "But with medication you have a decent quality of life. I mean you're one of the best freaking heart surgeons around here. You're not a failure simply because of this illness."

"What if, one day, I get an episode during a surgery. One day, someday, someone's going to die because of me."

"That precisely why you take your meds even if you don't like. And if that day comes, then we'll think about it then."

"It'll be too late by then," she said in distress.

"But it hasn't happened. The what if's in the future can stretch on forever. You've got this under control. It only happens when a dose gets skipped or when the intensity of stress is too much."

"That's precisely the problem. If I could handle the stress better, none of this would happen."

"It's not your fault. It may be your body's fault, but it's not yours. Look, you're a doctor, stressed people fall sick more easily right,. There's that cortisol thingamajig. If they could handle stress better, maybe they wouldn't fall sick. But people fall sick from stress all the time, it's called being human."

"I need to get better," she protested.

I leaned over to kiss her. "And you will get better with medication. One day if it goes away, then it goes away. Till then, you're not a burden to me. I love you exactly the way you are. You save so many people's lives every day, if you're not stressed that'll be weird. You're stressed because you know the weight of someone's life. That doesn't make you weak, it makes you someone strong." I raised an eyebrow at her, "So…Porridge?"

Wiping away the tears, she laughed. "You must be very desperate to get me to eat it."

"Of course, unless you get back your energy, I can't do funny things to you," I said jokingly.

Her brows lifted in surprise. "Wow. Are you hitting on me? Who are you? And what have you done to my wife?"

Unwittingly, I blushed.

She leaned forward to kiss me full on the mouth. Her soft warm lips pressing against mine as her tongue brushed the insides of my mouth. For a whole 10 seconds, all I could think of was the closeness of her warmth. She smiled into the kiss as her lips curved around mine. "I'm already looking forward to getting better," she murmured.