Tired eyes opened on an unfamiliar room. Sharp, chemical scents bit into his nostrils, he tensed, and felt a pain in his arm.
"Easy, Apollo."
He felt the bed dip with another's weight and the sheets he'd been tangled in were straightened out. Sophia finished by smoothing down his wild locks that were tangled with the sweat of sleep.
"Where am I?"
"I had you brought here, when you didn't wake up."
"What?"
"You've been asleep for two days." His eyes finally focused on her, sitting on the edge of his bed, then trailed to the machine and IV in his arm. "I wanted to monitor you and make sure you were getting fluids," she explained.
"Why was I out for so long?" He sat slowly, feeling the weight of sleep still threatening to drag him back.
"You tell me. Did you sleep at all after Baron died and Toma attacked you?" He shook his head. "And after that, when your vector disappeared in the middle of that battle?"
"I lost consciousness."
"That doesn't count as sleep. You crashed, Apollo, you're body just needed rest."
"Well, am I okay to go now?"
"Only if you promise to eat something, and take care of yourself."
"When have I ever refused food?" But his voice was flat, there was no smile in him. She removed his IV, but her hand lingered on his arm.
"Apollo, you and I once had a talk about kinship."
He stiffened.
"Baron was your family."
He pulled his arm away from her but he didn't get off the bed. "Yes."
"I think you need to talk about this. I would like to listen."
He dropped his head but shook it. "What is there to say?"
"Anything. Everything. Tell me how you feel, what you're thinking?"
"What I feel...there are no words for what I feel." He rubbed a hand over his eyes and slid off the bed. "As for what I'm thinking—that's not for anyone to know but me." He made his way from the clinic, she followed him to the doors.
"I'll be here, Apollo, when you're ready."
He said nothing and left.
"Geeze, poor kid." Pierre mumbled from the far end of the dormitory. He and Jun had stopped at the entrance when they saw him on his bed, laying on his side, completely limp, yet the quality of his breathing told them he was still awake. "I've never seen him like this—he never slows down. This has really stopped him dead in his tracks."
"Well after the way he broke down in the woods the other night, I'm not surprised. As upset as he is over Baron, he's probably equally confused and frightened by these emotions."
"You think?"
"Apollo thinks he's invincible. Now he knows he's not. He can't fight or escape this, so he doesn't know how to deal with it."
"Geeze, you major in psychology or something?"
"Maybe someday." Jun sighed. "But for now I hope we can figure out how to help him without a psychology degree."
"I made you a strawberry shake."
Hazel eyes drug up from the floor where they'd settled hours ago. They met her bright blue ones and for a second she felt his despair as deeply as she had in the vector.
"Here." She held up the frothy beverage between them.
"I don't even like those."
"What?" She sat back and glared at him. "But you steal them from me all the time."
"'Cause I was hungry." He shrugged.
"You jerk! Well I went to the trouble of making it for you so now you have to eat it!"
"What? Is that how it works?"
"Yes it is." She took a hold of his shoulder and sat him up. "Now drink it." She pushed it into his hands.
"Silvia..." he stared at the pink substance but didn't make a move to eat it. "You don't have to be so nice to me."
"What? I'm not being nice." She crossed her arms over her chest. "Sophia asked me to make sure you ate something."
"Oh."
Silvia's frame slumped slightly. She sat on the bed next to him. "Actually I asked her if I could do anything."
He tried to smile. He failed.
"You should drink that, it's good for you."
He raised the glass and drank slowly through the straw. He finished it though, and she took the glass back.
"Feel any better?"
"Yeah." His voice was so dead, eyes ever on the ground.
"You're lying." He didn't answer. She sighed. "It's okay. You don't have to feel better right away. No one expects you to."
"But they do, don't they?"
"What?"
"They think I should get over it now."
"No, no one thinks that."
"Then they think I'm weak."
"Apollo stop. Stop thinking about how we feel and worry about your own feelings."
"I don't want to." He dropped back to his side and tucked his feet up on the bed behind her. She continued to sit there. "Each day I get further away from him." He whispered. "The day after it happened, I kept thinking, just yesterday I saw him, I held him, I talked to him. Then the next day, it was just two days, then three. It was still close. But now it's almost been a week. Next thing it will be a month. Someday it will be years...years since I talked to him, since I saw him...I don't want that to happen. I don't want to slowly lose those memories to time. I don't want to keep getting farther and farther away from him."
She was left speechless by his words. Their profoundness touched her. Their sorrow silenced her.
He had drifted into sleep once more. Her fingers had played through his hair, until his mind had calmed and he had been able to rest. When he woke, she was gone, and his first instinct was to find her.
He'd left the dormitory for that purpose before realizing what he was doing. What had he intended by seeking her out in the dead of night? He wasn't sure, he blamed the desire on the grogginess of sleep. Still, her kindness, the silent comfort she'd given—he did need to thank her for that. But that was a conversation for the daylight, so he changed his direction, and found himself wandering back to the command, to those empty pods where the others sat.
He didn't know how to use the controls, how to take readings and give advice. He didn't know how to watch others fight, he only knew how to fight himself. It's how he'd lived, all his short life, fighting tooth and nail to survive and to protect.
"Apollo." He went rigid at the strong voice behind him. His fingers clenched where they had absently been running over one of the chairs—the one where Silvia normally sat.
"Don't. I don't want to hear your so called wisdom right now." He said their commander.
Gen Fudo moved behind him. Apollo never turned, but a hand came down on his shoulder.
"I was only going to say, I am sorry."
"...Oh."
"Apollo."
"What?"
"Why did you stay?"
"At DEAVA?"
"Yes."
"Because I promised Baron I'd save the others, the children we were protecting."
"And if you hadn't made that promise? If your friends were safe?"
"I said I didn't want riddles."
"It's no riddle, just a question, something to consider, deep in your heart. If those children were safe, would you have no other reason to stay here?"
"Why does it matter?"
"Because the answer might help you now, it might help you find strength you didn't know you had."
He shrugged out from under Fudo's hand. "You mean them, the others. That's what you're always trying to teach us—teamwork."
"And what is teamwork to you, Apollo? Is it not another word for friendship?"
The boy stilled. "I won't replace Baron with them."
"Who said anything about replacing? But you do have more than one friend, Apollo. And when you find your own strength is not enough to carry you through, then you must find strength elsewhere. Where better to look than you friends?" He moved out of the room. "Good night, Apollo."
He watched him leave and then turned back to the chair. "Silvia..."
He stood on her balcony, making no further move to enter the Alisia household. He had made his way here in the dark, but now doubted himself and leaned back on the rail with half a mind to run for the woods again. But the night loomed dark and long ahead of him, and for all the sleeping he'd done the past few days, he still felt exhausted.
He moved over to the doors and crept inside.
He followed her scent, went to the door, it was half open, he saw her sleeping. He stood, concealed in shadows, watching, but not entering.
No. He couldn't be here. What was he thinking? She would call him a creep and then Sirius would wake up and—
"Apollo?" He jolted at the whisper and took a step back, but she had seen him. He waited while she rose from her sheets, still fully dressed as if she'd just collapsed there after leaving him in his bed. "What are you doing here?" She whispered when she met him at the door.
"I..." He stared at her, blue eyes clear even in the dark. They watched one another until he could no longer hold her gaze. He couldn't explain why he'd come, he didn't even understand it himself.
"It's okay." She took his hand, drew him forward past the threshold and closed the door. They didn't speak, she led him to the bed and had him sit. He never looked up, eyes downcast but she sat behind him, closed her arms around him, and drew him down. They lay together in silence. She kept her arms around him, presser her head into his shoulder. He closed his eyes. He found rest.
"Silvia!"
The two started awake as one at the rapping on the door.
"Silvia, you're going to be late for classes!"
"I uh—I'm coming brother."
"Silvia, you sound strange, what's going on?" The door knob twisted. Her hand shot out and smacked Apollo with stunning force. He fell off the bed and flat on the floor just before the door burst open.
"BROTHER! I might not have been decent."
He looked her over. "You slept in your clothes?"
"Just get out!" She flew at him, trying to get him out but he eyed the rest of the room suspiciously.
"What are you hiding?"
"Nothing, Sirius." But he pushed past her.
"No, I sense something is off." He made his way into the room, inspected the bed and the floor but saw nothing.
"Satisfied?" Silvia snapped from the door. "Now do you mind? I want to get ready before class."
"Fine." He crossed back to the door. "But don't take long."
"Of course." He left and she slammed the door shut behind him. "ERG!" She let out an anamilistic noise. "That could have been bad." She stomped over to the bed where Apollo was crawling from under the bed and extricating himself from the sheets.
He was laughing.
"How can you think this is funny? Do you know what Sirius would have done if he'd found you?"
But he continued to roll on the ground, gasping as he tried to mute his sounds.
"Apollo!" She covered her mouth as soon as she screamed his name. He stilled. They waited to hear Sirius come storming in but only silence reigned. "He must have already left." She sighed. "And we should too—and stop laughing!"
He stood when she stormed out, his smirk slow to fade. Her hysterics always made him laugh, but after everything, he was surprised to find himself even able to. It felt good, it felt normal. And when she scowled at him when he caught up her on the walkway to class, he thought maybe things could feel normal again—maybe.
Classes went on, he drifted, maybe even fell asleep, he never paid attention anyway. He caught Silvia give him a look a few times, but he couldn't tell what she was thinking. That evening, he slumped onto the couch in the common room. Not long after, Pierre and Chloe joined him, then Jun and Tsugumi, then Rena, Silvia and Reika. The next thing he knew, the evening had disappeared to chatter and stories and bickering and gossip. When people started to leave for bed, Silvia looked to him again.
"Well," He stood up and stretched to answer her silent question, "I'm off, night everyone." There were only a few people left anyway, and he crept into the boys' dormitory, already dark, most people in bed.
He lay down and shut his eyes, holding onto the conversations, the laughter, the faces of his friends.
"Baron!" The sheets were off before he even woke up. Several other boys sat up sharply at his cry. His chest was heaving, sweat clung to him, but he sprung from the bed and out into the hallway even as he tried to catch his breath.
"Dammit." He cursed, moving down several corridors in case Pierre or one of the others decided to follow. He didn't want to see them, he was embarrassed. After a relatively normal day, he'd thought he could have slept through the night on his own.
He wandered the facility for over and hour before he saw her, face glowing under the moonlight that cast though high windows. He came to a stop, not sure what the ghostly girl might be doing up this late.
"It's alright." Rena said without turning to him. "I find it hard to sleep, so I like to feel the moonlight on me."
"Oh." He was on the landing above her but dropped lightly down to the floor next to her, bypassing the stairs.
"I thought you were Chloe at first, sometimes she comes to talk to me, when she can't sleep."
"Are you up late alot?"
"Most nights."
"Why? Do you have nightmares?"
"Sometimes. Is that why you're awake Apollo?"
"What?" He balked and blushed at the same time. "No, of course not, I'm just not tired."
"Oh. Well when I have nightmares, I like to talk to someone, so I forget the fear of the dream."
He wasn't stupid, but he also didn't have it in him to call her out on the ploy, so he sat next to her chair and said up to her, "You can talk to me if you want."
"Thank you, Apollo." She recounted a dream, of darkness and shadow, of feeling lost. He listened to her soft tones, let the moonlight seep deep into his bones.
"But mostly," she concluded, "in my dream, I am afraid of loneliness. Because deep down, I don't think the others like me very much. I think that I frighten them some."
"Frighten them?" Apollo scoffed. "There's nothing frightening about you, Rena."
"Thank you, Apollo. I'm not frightened of you either." He smiled at the strange compliment.
"Don't feel alone, Rena, everyone cares about you. Even if they don't show it all the time." She smiled now too.
"Yes, I think you're right. Will you walk me to my room? I think I feel like I could go to sleep now."
"Yeah, me too." He stood and moved with her down the halls. When he'd said goodnight and returned to his dorm he found everyone asleep again. When he lay down, he remembered her quiet smile, and it didn't take long to drift back to sleep.
Thank you Eien for the review! Next time there will be some action!
Riza
