Chapter One: Leaves and Rain and Days of the Year
Time never waits.
Red eyes fly open to stare at a dull white ceiling. The muffled beeping and whirling of machinery seems to echo throughout the silence. The bitter bite of antiseptic hangs heavy in the air. In the distance, civilization creeps forward one stoplight at a time. Her mouth tastes dry and coppery. Her limbs feel like leaden weights, raw and sore as she weakly shifts.
It delivers all equally to the same end.
I'm alive, she thinks. I'm awake. Elation builds in her chest despite the pain she feels. She lives, she breathes. She feels the blood flow through her veins and, for the first time in a very long time, she can hear her heart pounding in her ears.
Ryoji, she thinks. Ryoji, listen, my heart-
A gasp echoes throughout the otherwise silent room and she realizes that it came from her. She's alive. She no longer walks with Death, debating endlessly about keeping the end of the world at bay. She no longer feels metaphysical shackles around her wrists and no longer hears the voice of Death, her closest friend.
You, who wish to safe-guard the future.
She swallows, feeling as though her throat will crack open, and slowly turns her head to the window. Lights flash and car engines roar. She sees herself in a dim, shaky reflection in the window. A pale, sickly and scared looking girl looks back at her. The auburn hair that had once been thick and lush rests on a blindingly white pillow. It is stringy, thin and dead looking. Red eyes stare almost accusingly back at her, faltering against the bright lights of a city that never mourned her slumber and never waited for her awakening.
However limited it may be…
She tries to speak but her voice is caged in her throat. She turns her head to her left and finds a calendar hanging limply among stethoscopes and tongue depressors. The picture is of the moon as though reminding her of her fate. To anyone else, the picture would be boring and ordinary. But to her it is a reminder of terrible things. That reminder strikes her as loud as a bell tolling and she forces her eyes downward. A few boxes of the month have been marked off with a precise black marker and the uneven lines seem to be counting down to something.
Or keeping track of meaningless, empty days.
You will be given one year.
She squints, blinking a lifetime of sleep from her eyes, and reads the date where the marked boxes end.
March 5, 2014.
Four years, she thinks. God, I'm twenty. When did I turn twenty? The thought creeps up out of nowhere and she chides herself for it. Of all the things in all the universe to be concerned about, her age should be at the bottom of the list. She knew the answer. She had turned twenty while walking with Ryoji in a place where time had no meaning and this body had long since given up the will to live.
No, that isn't quite accurate, is it? This body hadn't given up the will to live. She remembers how much she had wanted to live. How many more ramen bowls she had wanted to taste, how many idle nights walking Koromaru she'd wanted to spend, how many more stolen kisses she had wanted to feel from a smiling boy with steely eyes hiding underneath silver hair-
No, she tells herself. She hadn't had a choice in the end, had she? It hadn't ever been her decision to make. She had been chosen by the red string of fate. She had been the wild card but the deck had always been stacked against her.
She shifts, painful and stiff. She swings herself into sitting position with a great and heaving effort. Her limbs feel so weak, atrophied and marked with ugly red bed sores. She shouldn't even be able to move.
I shouldn't even be awake.
Her bare feet touch the cold tile floor, white and black speckled, and she sees her shaky reflection stare accusingly back at her from between her toes. The clock tick-tocks to break the silence and she looks at it. It is an unassuming plastic thing, white as everything else in the room is. She watches the minute hand count down to midnight.
She prays with everything that she is that the clock will just strike midnight and a minute after that the clock will strike 12:01. She prays that will be the end of it and maybe, just maybe, the gods had decided that she served her time and deserved to be happy. But the clock strikes midnight and stops ticking all together. She feels a familiar chill run down her spine and she can no longer hear the sounds of the city from the window. The machines that had been keeping track of her vital signs fall silent and she pulls the EKG pads off in disgust. She shakily stands and promptly falls against the nightstand, knocking over the contents atop of it. Glass shatters and she feels cold water run to engulf her feet.
Bright yellow stands out against the black and white speckled tile in a manner that looks almost garish. Sunflowers look up at her, beautiful and oddly fresh. She leans down to rescue the slip of paper connected to the flowers before the water can ruin it. She sees two simple words that make her heart almost cease to beat.
Arisato Minako.
Her name. Of course it is her name. This is her hospital room and these are her flowers. But who would still bring her flowers after all of this time? Logically, she knows she should be thinking of other things. She knows she should have wanted her friends to move on from her fate and to look toward happiness without her. She can't shake the happiness from herself when she thinks of her friends remembering her. She never wanted to be forgotten, even though she knew that road would be less painful. She opens the small card to see if there is anything else to be read, even though the Dark Hour is upon her and she should be more concerned with things more important than hospital sunflowers.
Wake up soon. I'll be waiting. Love, Aki.
Tears run down her face at the words. Four years have passed since she willingly sacrificed herself to save to world. Four years since she laid on the rooftop of Gekkoukon with her head in Aki's lap, fighting to keep her eyes open and to stave off the fear she had felt. She had wanted to keep feeling the sun warm against her skin and to keep hearing the voice of the man she loved in her ears.
Starting now, we'll never be apart.
God. How many vases of flowers had sat next to her comatose form only to wither and die? How many desperate notes scribbled for a woman who would never read them? She wants to find him, wants to wrap her arms around him and just listen to him breath. She wants to make up for lost time, wants to say the things she should have said. She wants to be happy.
She shouldn't be awake. Her awakening means that something is very, very wrong and the world is in grave danger. She is the Great Seal, the endgame of Nyx, the one to keep the Eternal Mother from slaughtering her children in dreadful apathy. She walks with Death to stand guard over the Earth and its inhabitants while yearning for the chance to be human again. She can't.
She can't.
She inches her way to the window. She doesn't see any shadows. She just sees the coffins of transmogrified people lining the streets. She forces her way to the door and out into the hall. The staff and patients have all been transmogrified too. Minako is an island in the sea of the dead. She takes a white labcoat hanging on a hook and wraps it around herself. It hangs off of her painfully thin and weak form.
She walks out into the street, looking up at the hollow and unnatural light of the moon.
"I won't let you win," she croaks. Her feet slap against the pavement and she makes her way down the road with no destination, only an objective, in mind.
Go forth with your heart as your guide.
So I accidentally a Persona thing. College? Other stories? Tendonitis? Pshaw. The poem I'm using for it is called Death, A Parting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.