Disclaimer: I don't own Code Lyoko
Title: Cold
Summary: Sometimes, finding out too late is worse than never finding out at all.
Warnings: Kind of depressing and sad. Bits of vulgar language, but nothing above hell/damn. Hiroki centric. Mentioned character deaths, but no real descriptive details.
Author's Note: While it's not openly expressed, I imagine Hiroki to be in his late 40's, early 50's, here. Likewise, Yumi was in her 40's or 50's. You'll have to figure out the math, if you're interested.
...
From Yumi's will Hiroki received a long lecture on treating his future partner correctly (He snorted. Hiroki had been married for almost ten years now, and even in the afterlife Yumi was still giving him marital tips), a few of her more expensive and manly looking pieces of jewelry to do with as he saw fit ("Wear them, pawn them, burn them, whatever. Just take the damn things."), and a set of instructions that led him to a small but well-used diary that she'd buried in an outdated but sturdy wood box. From the looks of the pages, they hadn't been of any use for years, but had once been flipped through routinely.
The Ishiyama family as a whole had been given a few of her more treasured pictures and some of her more favorite pieces of jewelry. Everything else was to be donated to certain charities or to be burned.
The diary was for the whole family as well, but Hiroki was the only one far enough along in the mourning process to break the rusted lock and read the inside.
The script was Yumi's special mix of mostly Kanji with Hirigana and the odd bit of Romanji, which peeked Hiroki's interest. Yumi had always said that she found Kanji to take to long, and only wrote in it in formal letters and notices, or whenever else the occasion seemed fit.
That, or when she didn't want many people to understand what she was writing.
"I'd like to start this by saying that I apologize for anything that might be outdated on my will. I had it written in February, not long before I turned 16, and I'll probably never bother to update it. Oh well. I would also like to add that if I'm presumed dead/missing, and you buried an empty casket at my funeral, give up hope now. I'm dead. Save your money and peace of mind instead of blowing it on news stories and search teams. My body will be found in time, I'm certain. Leave it be."
Hiroki's breath caught. Yumi wasn't missing as the letter had warned, she had been found along with her friends in the heart of the nearby woods in the winter, having disappeared in the early fall. There was nothing to presume. The police had labeled it a mass suicide, but he knew better. Even still, having it be put so bluntly, especially by the one he'd recently had to bury, hurt.
"I'm not sure how long this will be, or if it will make much sense by the time I'm finished. Even so, I ask that you stick with it anyway. If anything, I hope you'll at least admit, even if you don't believe a word I write, that I can be one hell of a storyteller when I want to be."
Hiroki sat down on the couch, got as comfortable as he could be in his work suit, and read.
Some things he laughed about;
"Note to self; never give Odd sugar again. I'm pretty sure we've been permanently banned from that candy store. Too bad, too, they made some killer taffy."
"I love Jeremie, I really do, but on days like this, I get the urge to slip some poison into his coffee, just to shut him up for awhile."
Aelita needed bras. Took her to a fancy bra store. Due to our sizes- or lack thereof- however, the lady at the counter mistook us for a pair of really good drag queens, and made a few rather crude comments about our 'preferences' in front of a six year old child who's mother obviously disapproved of the woman's behavior. I informed the manager, stepped on her overpriced ugly high heels as hard as I could in my brand new pair of boots, then exited via the back door with Aelita. (Walmart, as it turns out, has better taste in both bras and employees.)
Others made his heart ache;
"Franz Hopper is dead. We gave him a little headstone and buried some of his trinkets and a couple plastic-sealed books there as a way to say goodbye, but it doesn't feel like its enough."
"The first time I stepped out of the scanner, my heart skipped a beat. It's done so every time I've left the scanner. I always thought it was just the adrenaline mixed with paranoia, but it's starting to happen at random intervals, X.A.N.A attack or no, in places other than the scanners. My room, the classroom, the cafeteria, etc. Ulrich and Odd are feeling the same thing, and Aelita's heart rate has always been a little off. It's only a matter of time before Jeremie's heart starts acting up, and then it's only a matter of time before we start getting more serious heart conditions. I'm afraid we'll kneel over before the world is safe."
"It wasn't our fault. We tried to bring him back, honest. (tear stains were scattered about the page) I get the feeling that, if we ever told anyone, they wouldn't say the same thing."
He read for hours, laughing, crying, sometimes getting angry enough to want to rip the book apart with his bare hands. Eventually, it ended;
"I'm not sure who will read this. Maybe it'll be you, mom and dad, or you, Hiroki, or maybe all three of you will read this together. Maybe this will be dug up by a stranger. Honestly, a big part of me hopes no one will ever read this at all, but a larger part of me wants someone to know."
"I'm not asking you to believe me. I know I sound crazy. Hell, most of the time I feel crazy for doing this, agreeing to this chaos. All I ask is that you never turn on the computer under the factory. Even if you think this is all a load of rubbish, don't do it. Think of it as a dead women's last wish, if you have to. I'd rather you destroy it, honestly, but I'm not sure what hell would be unleashed if you did. Just... leave it be. Please.
-Yumi Ishiyama
(P.S.- If you're interested, the others have journals like these buried in their respective countries. Mine's the only one in my will, as far as I know. I'm sure if you look hard enough, though, you'll eventually find them.)
(P.P.S.- Burn this when you're done with it, please.)
He located and visited the Hermitage a week later, a single flower tucked away in his pocket along with some incense and a lighter. He walked through the empty sewers in a hoodie and jeans, carrying a half-full bucket of water with soap and a sponge.
It took him awhile, but eventually he located the run-down house, and then he found the old gravestone around the back near the tree-line, just where Yumi had written it was.
The stone was a hunk of rock that had probably found after searching through the woods for a few hours, chipped and misshapen, the words 'Franz Hopper- Father And Scientist' messily carved into the surface. Hiroki washed the stone, cleared the grass around the grave, and lit the incense. The flower he placed on the front doorstep of the old house. He locked all the doors as requested, re-hid the key, and put a makeshift condemned sign on both the front and back doors.
"May no one have to step into that place ever again." He remembered reading. "There's a certain kind of aura around the house that makes anyone who enters it feel hopeless."
Hiroki felt hopeless just standing on the doorstep.
It took him over a month, but eventually Hiroki got up the nerve to see the inside of the factory personally. He needed to know if she was telling the truth, weather or not she was truly crazy, but he honestly feared the answer.
The old cable snapped under his weight halfway down, and as Hiroki wasn't as young as he used to be, it took some effort (and swearing) to get back up.
He lightly ran his thumb over the break. It wasn't just age that broke the line, he decided. Yumi and the others had been using them longer than he'd thought.
Hiroki warily stepped into the old elevator and, taking a deep breath, pressed the button.
The old machine moved easily and with little jerking, despite the creaking noises it made as it moved. Someone had been working on it at some point.
Someone who wasn't around anymore.
Hiroki's breath caught as he stepped out of the elevator and stared at the almost innocent-looking computer in the middle of the room. Yumi hadn't been lying, he realized with a start. The proof was right there in his face, the cause of the rift that had formed between them right in front of his eyes.
Yumi wasn't crazy. She really had been saving the world. And he really had unknowingly been a hindrance to her cause on more than a few occasions.
"Damnit!" Anger and shame coursed through him. He chucked the diary at the screen, watching with blurred eyes as it landed on the dusty chair. "Why tell me now? Now that... Now that it's too late?"
There wasn't any answer. Hiroki dearly wished there was.
Taking the elevator down another floor, he found the scanners she'd written about so often. The ones that may have been been part of the reason she'd died.
Hiroki felt vaguely sick, but hadn't eaten anything that day, so nothing came up.
Pushing open the one he decided was hers from what she'd said in her writing, he slowly stepped inside and pulled it halfway shut. He leaned his head against the back of the container, closed his eyes, and tried to imagine locking himself in something so small and constricting and going to battle back when he was 15.
The image that came to mind wasn't very pretty.
He left another flower on the bottom of the half-open scanner, retrieved the book from the chair (he burned it at the Hermitage later that night as a way of properly saying goodbye), and securely locked the factory up forever, swearing to himself that no one, not even himself, would ever set foot in the lonely place again as he plastered the condemned signs on the chained and locked main entrance before going home.
The night was empty and cold, just like his heart.
Author's Note: And this is the closest I've ever gotten to full-on angst, ever. =) What do you think?
No flames! Don't like don't read! Review please!