Author's Notes: Hello! So, this isn't my first story on here. Hell, it isn't even my first K-On! story on here. I swear I'll finish that one; I've just lately been bouncing from story to story, which definitely includes this one. I'm actually pretty late to the K-On! party. Hell, the movie ended things in 2011, yet I never even watched it until last month. But it's inspired me to write about it, particularly about Mio. There's something lovable about the shy, aloof girl. Unfortunately, I'm not a happy writer, so it's not gonna get much better for her, alas. The basis of this story is a loose shout-out to one of my favorite books: 'The Dead Zone' by Stephen King. Just without the magic mind powers. I've decided to change things up a little bit by, at the end of each chapter, adding some lyrics about (sometimes loosely about) the events at hand. These are lyrics that I've personally written, so they're not exactly fluffy-fluff HTT stuff. I would love to hear from anyone who ends up reading this, though! I'm not altogether sure how reviews work (I guess they're per chapter? But I don't know.), but I would still love to hear from you, either via review or PM if so. What you enjoy, what you loathe, why it's not a Mitsu story (man, there are a lot of Mitsu stories). Anyway, that's all from me. Enjoy!

Darkness. It had felt like the crippling, fearful night had been upon her sight for years, yet only an instant simultaneously. She didn't know why she thought that; she didn't even know if she was thinking at all. At times, she was running down the rain-strewn street, though she never knew whether she was running towards something or away. Then she'd be with her friends, but how she arrived there she never knew. They would never look at her, and when she attempted to speak she could never hear her voice. How long this went on for, she couldn't even guess. It felt like a second. It felt like a lifetime. Nothing lasts forever, however, and soon the black was lifted to reveal the stormy, clouded, and confused gray. Overcast eyes blinked slowly, hesitantly, as if the action was foreign. Things were still dark, but it felt different now, as if there was truly light somewhere to shine upon her confusion. The bed felt weird; how she knew without a second thought was unknown, but she could tell this bed was not her own. At the very least though, she was aware enough to believe that she had been sleeping. All of those strange images, those activities that played out all wrong; they must have been dreams. They weren't real, but was this real? It felt real, so perhaps it was. She could see the ceiling now, and so she knew that she was in a room. The ceiling was unfamiliar though, and so was the bed. "Where... Where am I?" Her voice sounded hoarse, unused. She barely recognized it. When she sat up, long, untamed hair fell in her eyes, and when she went to brush it away her hand froze in midair. A small needle-like object was stuck in her hand, attached to a long, clear tube that continued out of her field of view. Where was she?

It was at that point she realized there was something on her face. Gently placing a finger on it, she figured it was some kind of breathing mechanism, with another tube in her nose to match the one in her hand. As her mind began to awaken more and more, panic began to set in as she desperately tried to recall what had happened. Her eyes desperately scanned the room, and she finally reached the conclusion that she was in a hospital room. This was a hospital bed, and up there was the hospital ceiling. That would explain why she didn't recognize anything; this wasn't her room. She was no longer dreaming, that was for sure, but it felt as if she had woken up into a nightmare. Every attempt at conjuring up a memory that might explain her current situation brought nothing but fog, and her body wouldn't even respond naturally to the onset of panic. Something then caught her eye, and she slowly titled her head to the left to look at a small wooden table. It was situated next to a large machine, a green line bouncing rhythmically across its blackened screen. On the table sat two items: a silver vase with four deceased flowers sitting glumly inside, and a very deflated balloon. How long had she been here? A small, scared 'help' passed her lips, but no one was there to answer her. She was alone.

She laid there for hours, trapped on the bed alone with nothing but her jumbled and confused thoughts for company. After careful exhaustion of her surroundings, she had found no trace of her cellphone. Something in her mind told her that trying to leave would not end well, so she just laid there without a semblance of knowledge as to why she was in the hospital. At the same time, her mind was telling her that closing her eyes and drifting back to sleep would be just as disastrous, so she stayed awake and stared at the ceiling. Occasionally she'd change things up and look at the wall instead. Her friends. She remembered that part of her dream. Where were they? Their faces wouldn't appear in her mind, but she could tell that they existed outside of her mind, but they weren't there. The curtains were drawn shut, so she couldn't tell what time of day it was, but she figured it must've been really late. With all of that time within her own mind, she came to realize that she'd had many dreams; too many to be normal. She couldn't fully remember them all, but she knew they'd happened. How long had she been asleep? Suddenly, a change to the lighting situation by the curtains drew her attention, and she could see a tiny sliver of light trying to fight its way into the run. "Then it must be dawn." As soon as she spoke those words, the door to her room opened and she heard a shocked exclamation. "Miss Akiyama, you're awake!"

She was sitting up now, having taken some time to get used to the artificial light beaming down on her. The tubing and machines had been removed, and she could finally move a bit more freely, but things weren't right. Things were different. Her legs felt horribly weak, and her skin was ungodly pale. When she touched her long, raven locks, she could tell they had been washed, but not cut, and she could not remember ever having her hair this long. Then again, she couldn't remember much regardless. Her parents. That was something she could remember, and they were sitting by her side, looks of unrelenting joy and relief plastered on their faces. Maybe that was the emotion she was to feel as well, but all Mio Akiyama could feel was confusion and an itching sense of dread. Nobody had yet told her why she was here. Before she could ask though, the nurse who had originally found her awake interjected. "Miss Akiyama, do you remember what happened?" The question sent a tingle of annoyance down her spine. That was the question she specifically wanted answered! Her body felt too weak to show any emotion though, so all she could do was shake her head slightly. The nurse gave a slightly fretful look towards Mio's parents; she didn't like that look. "Mio-chan..." That was her mother. She turned her head slightly to focus on her instead. "You were in a car accident." There it was.

Mio's eyes widened slightly as a memory came back fitfully but forcefully into her mind. Calling it a car accident was a tad misleading, though it was an accident, and it did involve a car. She could remember walking home from practice. She could see her friends there, faceless like in her dreams. She couldn't see the car until it was too late. A loud scream, one owned by someone unfamiliar, roared in her head, and she felt like someone had snapped part of her memory back into place. "That car..." she murmured quietly, almost to herself. "I didn't see it..." She could see something akin to more relief on the others' faces with her remembrance of the occurrence, but having the memory back for herself didn't bring much comfort. As the seconds ticked by, the memory of that day became clearer and clearer, but something wasn't right: she didn't feel pain. There should have been pain after such an accident, but the only thing that felt wrong were her legs, and she could tell with admitted relief that they still worked. There was still movement within them, they were just weak, potentially from lying in a bed for hours. How many hours though? "School..." That was the next murmur to pass her lips. Graduation had happened so recently; the time between their exodus from high school and the journey to university hadn't even begun. "I... I still graduated, right?" She didn't know why she asked that question, for as more and memories began to overtake and bog down her brain, having already graduated came to mind. So yes, she had, that much was certain. Another look was passed between the nurse and her parents. She liked that look even less.

"Miss Akiyama... Mio, it was... It was a really bad accident." The nurse was looking at her with sad and understanding eyes. Mio wished she'd look away. "When you were taken here, you were alive, but..." But what? Why was she being so hesitant? The raven-haired girl looked towards her parents, but the look in their eyes was eerily similar. What was with that look? "You had fallen into a coma." Oh. The expression on her face didn't change, but she was no longer looking at her parents, or the nurse. She was staring at the wall, through the wall, someplace that wasn't there. It was as if her mind had detached itself from reality to cushion the blow of such horrid news.

"A... A coma...?" No, it couldn't be. Just yesterday she had been fine. She had been planning for university with her friends. It... was yesterday, wasn't it? "How long?..." She couldn't finish the sentence, but she didn't have to; everyone else understood what she wanted to know, though in some way she really didn't want to know, as if ignorance would make it just disappear.

"Three years." Three years. Her mind went blank at this point, staring emptily through the wall. Tears softly began to fall from her eyes, but she didn't even realize she was crying; she was completely numb. It wasn't possible. Three years of her life, just... gone. Suddenly, she began to laugh, a laugh that threw her for a loop just as much as it did the others. It wasn't funny, but still she laughed, laughed until she could laugh no more, a dull pain in her head and in her chest.

"Ahaha, three years... Good one. Did... did..." The sentence made sense in her mind. 'Did she put you up to this?' But who was 'she'? She couldn't remember clearly, and so the sentence died in the sterile hospital air. One thought was now in her mind, one that took precedence over all the others: she had to get out of here. "I want to go home now." That same look. What the hell was with that look?!

"Mio, your legs have atrophied since you were admitted here. We can't let you leave until you've built back up your strength." The nurse's voice was sweet, but it sounded overly-cloying in Mio's head. Atrophied? It couldn't have been three years. It had to be a joke. A sick, sick joke. They wouldn't let her leave, though. Not until she got her strength back. They didn't say how long she'd be forced to stay here. The confused girl - forced by the passage of time to age unknowingly into a young woman - fell silent as the nurse spoke to her parents, and she didn't acknowledge any of them when they left. Her mother and father both gave her a hug, but she stared right past them, and she tried to ignore their sad expressions as they left her alone in the white hospital room. Something in her mind told her to cry. It told her to scream, to defy her parents, her nurse, and run away, run until she had escaped the hell she was trapped in. Something told her these things would happen, but they didn't now. Instead she stared silently at the wall, trying to imagine how the old - the younger - version of herself would have reacted in such a situation. But she remembered nothing.

-lyrics- Years of Black

Trapped, locked, no key in my hand
I'm failing to understand
I don't remember who I am
I feel like I'm nothing
The darkness grasping at my heels
I don't know what I'm to feel
The memories have been concealed
Have I turned out to be nothing?

But I'm falling between my dreams
No, nothing now is what it seems
I pray to God to save me now
But if he can, I don't know how

[Chorus]
I'm a prisoner of my own mind
Dragged forward by the sands of time
I've forgotten what it's like to be
The person that used to be me
And I struggle against the rising tide
Washing out places to hide
Terrified and all alone
In this place I've called my home
But now I'm forced to breathe again
To relive all the strife and pain
So now I must pick up the slack
When I wake from years of black

A detour to the end of time
Has me in an awful bind
I know I'm stuck inside my mind
Though I breathe once more
Why does no one hear my cries?
When did it all go awry?
When did I last see the sky?
I don't know what life has in store

But I'm falling between my dreams
No, nothing is now what it seems
I pray to God to show the way
But he's been quiet everyday

[Chorus]