Drip, Drip Goes the Rest of My Heart
AU. Pain only discovered from scars haunts the boy who refuses vainly to recall the past four years of his life. Sins that burn under the boy's fingernails and skin threaten to ruin him. Sanctuary is a myth, but false hope isn't. Akuroku RS Dark Abuse
Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts…
Warning: This story will not only be boy-boy love and have some dark themes, but also have some pretty heavy torture and abuse that may be darker than you'd expect from me (I plan on making it all much worse than For You and I), so you may want to have something to laugh at once I really get into the story. I got this idea after having seen the movie Hostel, and anyone who hasn't seen it yet, don't bother, it's, it's too terrible for words! It should have been called Boobs and Blood since that's all it was…Anyway, if you still plan on reading, go on ahead!
Phase 1 White Lies Don't Hurt as Much, Just Worse
There was movement…within his body. How strange, that I'm still not dead yet…the young teen thought to himself as he continued to stare up into the bright fluorescent lights above him, blinding his eyes. He was numb; he could no longer feel anything in his body, or whatever was left of it. For all he knew, one of his arms could have been amputated, or maybe a few toes. Who knew? Surely he didn't, since his body seemed to have been shut off from his brain completely.
But the faint feeling of something running against his arm caused his to turn his head just barely to the right, as though he'd be able to see what it was he thought he felt. But just the simple movement made his body protest, and he could have groaned from the strange feeling that he guessed might be pain that shot up through his chest and neck. But the action also seemed to awaken his body some-what, and he discovered his right arm seemed to have a feeling similar to being asleep and a weightlessness that he tried to realize he could actually feel.
Then he heard it.
A quiet drip that seemed to echo through the room and through his ears continuously, before a sound just like the first followed and proceeded to flood his sense of hearing. A dripping that sounded much like the noise a leaky faucet created. It was hypnotic, and strange to his ever growing fuzzy mind. It took him a few moments to register where the dripping was coming from, and when he did; he also discovered what the feeling he barely felt in his arm was.
His right arm was hanging lifelessly over the edge of the metal table he was lying on, and whatever was dripping was coming from his benumbed fingertips. Listening to the drip-drip-drip of whatever it was for what seemed like hours but must really have been minutes, he slowly began to feel a strange languor, a lack of energy, that he didn't even know was possible to feel within his current state slowly cause a feeling akin to drowsiness fill him. His lips parted aversely, severely chapped and chaffing while sticking together as though having been glued, and it was as though he was trying to form words his voice wouldn't back up, and he slowly began to close his eyes.
But instead of his vision growing dark, it began to grow lighter and lighter around the edges till all he saw was an infinite witness. An abyss that seemed to house something only he could see, and it would have frightened him beyond measure if he'd had the energy to be afraid, and then everything went dark in neither blackness or shadow, just a colorless and indefinable darkness…as though someone had turned off the lights.
Three more drops of blood traveling down one of the many hairline trickles of blood running down his arm made their way down to his wrist where they swirled down to his hand, and each made their way down to a separate finger. All taking the time span of nearly five minutes, after the journey, they finally slipped down the already blood-slick fingers of the boy's right hand, and fell like a curtain to the floor. The white, white floor that gleamed in the obscenely bright light from the fluorescent bulbs above, except in the areas stained both pink and rust-red brown. But a thick trail of deepest red was slowly crossing the threshold of the room, and down to the center of the room where the drain grate was slowly welcoming the stream of blood that fell into its abyss. The puddle the three drops landed in was one of the few sources to this stream, and had spread in a thin layer over the stained tiles, sucking at any clean spots still left as though vermin stealing every grain of rice.
As the three drops disappeared within the drain, sounds of a door opening and footsteps accompanied by urgent voices echoed within the room. Maybe for the last time, or maybe not…
The thick bandages circling his fingers were too thick, too warm, and too uncomfortable. But he'd rather look at his fingers that looked as thick as sausages than look at what lay beneath the gauze. He'd seen what truly lay beneath them, and nearly threw up the small portion of food that he'd been able to eat that morning.
Glancing to his right, his eyes fell across the dark blue curtain blocking his vision of the other patient he was sharing the room with. He'd only seen her once, and that was when the girl had started screaming at two o'clock in the morning, waking him and alerting at least several nurses. The curtain had been pulled back and he'd gotten a glimpse of a red haired girl and she was clutching her wrist while howling in pain. He'd seen blood spilling out from between her fingers, and his heart began to race as he broke out into a cold sweat, and he felt as though an iron weight had been placed on his chest.
He'd all but passed out when his eyes fell upon the bloody scalpel that sat on the floor where the girl must have dropped it. When he'd awoken, it was morning, and the curtain had been redrawn, but he could hear the girl's peaceful breathing just those few feet away. It was also the morning that Dr. Valentine had come to see him after breakfast, and checked up on him, having also witness the boy's reaction to the unveiling of his hands. Hence, just a few hours later, he was now sitting up in bed, though it was just a bit painful, and contemplating his thoughts.
His eyes, though, moved from the curtain, back to his hands and the bandages carpeting them, and then to his left towards the window. The fading, late afternoon light was casting an orange glow to everything it could reach in the room, and the boy had the view of a city he couldn't name. He'd gazed out this window a few times, and had raked his brain, trying to place it, but he just couldn't. He thought it seemed familiar, but he pushed it off as unimportant.
But the thought that did remain, was why hospital rooms made it so that there was usually only one window, or usually only one patient would be able to see the windows if the curtain was drawn. Not glancing towards the curtain that split the room in half, the boy nestled deeper into the hospital bed pillows, still staring out the window. He wondered if the girl would have preferred to get the bed closest to the window.
He was so deeply caught up in his thoughts, he didn't hear the footsteps or notice the man standing a foot away from the foot of the bed till he spoke. "Roxas?"
The boy stiffened a bit from surprise and confusion, and he quickly turned his head, blue eyes wide, to stare at the tall, dark haired man dressed in a white coat. He felt a bit strange, hearing the nurses and his doctor calling him by his name, but that was only because he'd first heard it just barely two days ago when he first awoke in the hospital. He'd had no idea what he was doing their, or where or who he was for that matter. He hadn't been told the entire situation, and merely told he'd been in an accident, and that his name was Roxas. Roxas Highwind.
"Oh, Dr. Valentine," the boy stammered out, lifting his hand to brush blonde bangs out of his eyes. "I'm sorry, I didn't know you were there," he admitted with an apologetic smile. For some reason, it felt strange for him to smile, as though it was an extremely foreign expression to him. In fact, he found that he seemed to always be in a depressed sort of mood, as though heavy weights were attached to his shoulders and were weighing him down underwater. He hadn't even been able to laugh when one of the nurses had made a joke about the hospital food. An apologetic smile was the best he could come up with, and it seemed to be the only one he could make.
"It's all right, Roxas," the long haired doctor interjected with a wave of his hand. His garnet red eyes scanned the blonde's side of the room, finding a chair beside the bed, and the man made his way over to it, his shoe heels making a dull clicking on the tile floor. After he sat down, he sat up straight, but had a casual air around him that showed he was calm and relaxed, and set his clipboard down on his knee.
"Was…there something you wanted to speak with me about?" the boy asked curiously as he slowly hid his bandaged hands in the folds of the hospital blanket. Even though the doctor knew what lay beneath the bandages, Roxas felt ashamed of them and himself for having them, along with the strange feeling to want to keep them out of site.
"Actually, yes, there is something I want to speak with you about," the man explained, his voice soft and seemingly sympathetic. "Roxas, tell me, what do you remember?" the doctor asked, his eyes already holding a look that seemed to say that he already knew the answer.
"I-I don't know, I really don't remember anything specific." Roxas admitted, staring down into his lap, a touch of apprehension in his voice. "I can remember stuff like numbers, or names of some plants I learned about, but I don't remember faces. I can't remember my parents, if I had them, and I can't remember whatever got me here," the boy added, his voice soft and quiet, and also barely able to hear, as though he was getting his voice back. "Does this mean I've got…amnesia, or something?" he asked.
Nodding, Dr. Valentine glanced down at his clipboard, and looked back up at Roxas, "Roxas, you have what's called Dissociative Amnesia, which results from psycological trauma or a psycologically traumatic experience."
"Are…are you saying I did this to myself?" Roxas inquired with a hint of horror in his voice as he lifted a hand to indicate to his head.
"In a way, yes," Dr. Valentine said. "It was a psycological defense mechanism that your mind triggered on it's own to protect itself, to protect you. Something very traumatic was happening to you, and you shut yourself away from it by blocking it out, resulting in your memoryloss." Dr. Valentine explained while trying to keep it simple enough for the fifteen year old to understand. "Though it must have been very extensive for you to have forgotten so much," the man added almost as though to himself.
"W-what do you mean?" the boy asked, confusion slipping over his eyes.
"Most cases of Dissociative Amnesia are related to rape victims or victims to very violent attacks, and just remove the memories of the incident. Now, it's not uncommon, persay, to have forgotten the memories over a long and widespread peroid of time, though it's rare and a bit unusual. The event that triggered your amnesia must have been what we could call, a ' last straw,' I suppose,"
"Um, I'm not a…" the boy began, but stopped seeing the reasuring smile on his doctor's pale lips.
"No, your case, as far as we know, is not of those two natures," the black haired man stated, bringing what could be seen as instant relief to the blonde. "Well, I think that's enough for now, Roxas, you should get some rest," the man said, the same words he'd said when he'd left Roxas that morning.
As the doctor got up to leave, Roxas looked as though he was about to reach out for the doctor, but he pressed his hands further into the blanket: No one would want to be touched by such ugly, tainted hands. "Um, Doctor?" the boy asked, a slight bit of urgency in his voice.
"Yes?" the man asked, turning around to look down at the boy.
"Uh, I wanted to, well, I was wondering…that girl, over there," he stammered, feeling a bit uncomfortable asking about her, especially since his mind kept flashing images of the blood running over her fingers, and the scapel with a bloodied blade he'd seen on the floor.
"Ah, she's fine now, though she must just be sleeping lightly since the sedative would have worn off by now," the doctor explained. "But last night, as I think you're aware, she attempted suicide by cutting her wrist open with a scalpel she must have slipped from a nurse's tray. She's on suicide watch now, and a nurse has been checking in on her every so often. Though I'm sure you wouldn't have noticed anyway, hm?" the man mentioned, a bit of amusement in his voice.
"Oh, thank you, Dr. Valentine," Roxas said, and then watched as the man left, disappearing behind the curtain, and soon after followed by the closing of a door. It was then Roxas realized that he hadn't asked the man what he or whatever other doctors who were in charge of him knew what had caused him to give himself amnesia.
Sighing, he laid back down into the bed, wishing he could have turned onto one of his sides but finding that it hurt and sent pain rushing through his chest and arms. It really wasn't worth it when his back hurt the least when lying down. Deciding to follow Dr. Valentine's advice, he tried to relax himself and get some sleep. But his thoughts lingered on the red haired girl sleeping on the other side of the room, and he wondered if one of the many scars he was able to see was ever caused by a failed suicide attempt. The thought haunted him into the darkness that was known as sleep, and he couldn't block the picture and imageless dreams of blood, knives, and screams.
Reaching his office, Vincent Valentine sighed as he entered the room and closed the door behind him, rubbing the bridge of his nose as he walked over to his desk. He seemed as though he hadn't noticed the blonde man sitting on the couch that rested against the right wall of his office between a cupoard and sink counter, and a bookcase filled with medical books and tomes.
But after taking a seat in the brown leather chair behind his desk, he sighed as though something heavy were weighing down on his shoulders, and after merely setting his clipboard down on the desktop, and then moving to pick up an open folder that sat precauriously on the edge of his desk, he finally acknowledged the other man.
"Cloud," he began, as though that one word held the value of an entire conversation. The man, who'd been watching him the moment he stepped into the room, shifted his position on the couch before standing, a serious expression on his face.
"Roxas is his name, right?" the man asked in a very businesslike fashion as he strode over to the desk. Dr. Valentine nodded in response, and put down the folder, which was labeled Highwind, Roxas in two places: on the tab and the upper left hand corner on the face of the file. Cloud reached over for it and llifted it up, his thumb grazing the edge of the small picture paperclipped to the first page of the file. It was a picture of Roxas that the hospital had retrieved from his school records, and showed a very despondent young man who couldn't break a smile for the camera, and whose eyes looked haunted to the point of abyssal hollowness.
"Yes, Roxas Highwind," Vincent clarified, staring at the paper face-up on his clipboard, unknowingly rereading the words printed over it.
"What do you and Tifa know about him?" the man asked softly, his voice taking on a caring tone. "About his case, I mean," he added, looking up towards the doctor.
"Ms. Lockhart is handlinng the legal and judicial work, I'm simply his doctor," the man responded quickly, making the blonde man exhale in annoyance.
"Do you always have to give that speech when I ask about a kid?" Cloud questioned in aggravation as he looked over the file once more.
"It's only for the sake of my position, Cloud," Vincent replied with a small smile. But it fell the moment he turned back to the original topic, "But Tifa has spoken with police officals, and the evidence is quite overwhelmingly significant, though much of it is on that boy."
"Apparently the floor and table of that basement as well," Cloud muttered, knowing the basics of the case from the information he'd first heard from Tifa Lockhart. "They found him there, almost dead, right?"
"Correct…But what we found was horrifying, what that man did to him…" Vincent murmured, his voice heated by anger and disgust. "Someone with such vast medical knowledge and history doing that to an innocent child, his own son, no less…" Vincent seethed, his hands shaking as he clasped them together tightly to try and calm himself.
"Step son, you mean," Cloud interjected, though he didn't mean anything by it, and new perfectly well what the other was trying to say. "But I bet it was worse than your tests make you think," the blonde added softly in an understanding tone, his blue eyes growing dark for a moment before he blinked it away. "It proved to be extensive, right? And those scars…It makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up when I think about it."
"Mm…" the dark haired male hummed, staring into space as though his thoughts were being projected into the air around them in his office.
"You said it was Dissociative Amnesia, right? For his memories to be locked down that far, it makes me sick to my stomach to think of how long this was going on, this…torture…" Cloud whispered, visibly shuddering. After a moment, he'd regained his composure, and looked back towards the other man, closing the folder and placing it on the desk. "Vincent, when do you plan on sending him with me?" the blonde asked, his caring and soft tone replaced by business once again.
"As soon as Ms. Lockhart finishes the paperwork, he'll be ready, I presume. I'd guess around tomorrow, late morning to early afternoon," Cloud nodded, and made his way out of the office, grabbing his coat that was lying on the couch.
"All right, and tell Tifa I send my regards," the blonde said as he was about ready to leave the office, closing the door after seeing Vincent's passive glance of farewell.
Vincent then opened Roxas' file again, and stared down at the medical information, and then glancing towards his clipboard which held legal documents Tifa had practically risked her job to secretly fax over to him concerning Roxas' case. Though it wouldn't be the first time the social worker had done so for the sake of a child. The information just fueled his anger and repugnance even more. What was worse, and what was sitting uncomfortably at the pit of his stomach, was the fact that he'd lied to Roxas.
They knew he'd suffered greatly, just from the simple examinations they'd first put him through, and then the more intensive examinations had only proved and solidified many theories, along with horrifying a few doctors and nurses. But their science could only go so far. They knew very well what they had strong reason to believe was his torture that caused him to block his memories, but they wouldn't be able to know if if had been aided by rape or something of sexual nature. Had Roxas been a girl, they may have had a chance, but of course he was male, and from what they could tell, there were no marks around the genitalia region, so they had nothing to prove from it. But that didn't mean that it wasn't possible.
Vincent glanced from the picture of Roxas, to a silver picture frame that held within it a photograph of a couple as he sat back in his chair. The white lie that he'd made himself tell Roxas to relieve the boy and work with his psycological state at the moment was eating away at his stomach, and he resumed rubbing the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index fingers.
What he also hadn't told Roxas was that in cases of Dissociative Amnesia, the memory is stored in long term memory, but access to it is impaired because of the psychological defense mechanisms, and those who fall under that state of memory loss retain the capacity to learn new information, and partial or complete recovery of memory is quite possible and highly likely. By lying to Roxas now, he was only giving more fuel to the fire for the time to come when his memories started to return.
"My white lie to help him is only hurting him in the end, isn't it?" Vincent asked himself guiltily, knowing the reason he hadn't been able to tell the truth was because he couldn't bare to see those spiritless eyes on the boy again, not now that they at least weren't able to express the memories he had locked deep within his mind.
But the man frowned and felt his stomach sinking even as he recalled his visit with the boy from just about an hour ago. He'd seen the troubled look in the boy's eyes, and knew it was just a matter of time before the memories started rushing back, and he'd just added heat to the fire.
I like this story because just the thoughts and planning of future chapters gets the need for pain and psycological destruction out of my system, though there will always be thought leftover for For You and I, since that still needs to be finished…But anyway, I really hope you liked the first chapter, and even if you don't review (which, I hope you DO plan on reviewing…please) at least put it on your Alert list which I'm sure most of my readers do anyway…but still, I really want reviews and reader's thoughts on this story.
Oh, and more characters, like lovely, smexy Axel, will be introduced next chapter, which I plan to have up really soon. And damn, I've got school in just a little more than four hours…sheesh, start of High School will be fun. I can make new friends since I really don't like my current ones…and I can call myself a Freshman! Yay!