Chapter II: The Potency of Grief
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He wakes to the angry writhing of his stomach and a violent surge of nausea that rolls over him like an ocean wave cresting at shore as he gradually regains consciousness. Sharp daggers of pain explode in his temple as he shifts and he has to bite down on his tongue to keep from crying out in anguish. He can feel delicate tissue rend as his teeth dig into the organ, and a pulse of hot pain sweeps over him, turning his stomach. The bitter, metallic taste of blood on his tongue — as a result of his bid to keep silent — is enough to make him wretch. At the thought alone his stomach lurches in an unpleasant swoop, and on instinct he pushes himself over onto his other side just in time to meet with the hot, acidic taste of vomit in the back of his throat. He chokes at the foul taste, and struggling to breath, scrambles shakily to his hands and knees to heave.
After what seems an eternity, and after unceremoniously emptying his stomach onto the roughed stone floor before him, he is able to shift himself into a sitting position. Leaning wearily against the wall — more stone, he guesses, judging by its cool, damp feel, and rough texture — he manages to regain some of his composure. He feels horribly feverish, and the dull thrum of a headache pounding diligently behind his eyes only promises another spell of nausea, but he is alive.
That must count for something, he muses dryly, bringing the back of his hand to his mouth to wipe at the trail of congealing blood that had slowly covered his lips.
The silence that falls around him is almost suffocating. It is thick; undisturbed except for the harsh noises made from his ragged inhalations and exhalations of breath. It would be peaceful if it wasn't so eerie, he rationalizes.
"Where on earth am I?" he voices through gritted teeth as another wave of nausea overcomes him and he attempts to open his eyes to the dismal surroundings he is certain he will find.
And just as suddenly as the voiced thought came to him, a blur of white-washed memories flood back into his clouded mind in a crush of mismatched colors and eclectic noise: A crashing noise, his apartment door laying like a broken matchstick house on the floor, dirtying his living room and the adjoining, exiting hallway, and the three curious men dressed in Reikai garb that had confronted him with an arrest warrant with charges pending for murdering six ningens that he had never had so much as anything to do with…
The thought alone makes him shake his head at the utter foolishness of the insinuation. When shaking his head only worsens the pain in his skull, he stops. And at the jarring throb in his temple he stops to bring his hand to the place, only to wince as his fingers brush the tender mass, a swollen and tender welt, and a mess of blood-caked, vermillion hair matted to the side of his face. He forces himself to take in a deep breath. Not his best idea. The air is musty, thick with dust, and carries the rank perfume of decay. Again, he wretches.
"Well, well, well…" The words echo through the stillness, bouncing off of the stone walls to coalesce into the silence. Struggling to regroup himself from his second bout of gut-wrenching heaves, Kurama blinks open his eyes in time to watch a shadowy figure approach as more words ring through the darkness. "So, the murderer is alive, then?"
"So it seems," he mutters in reply. Though the tone is snide, the words come out slurred, thick around the bile and lingering taste of vomit lining his mouth. He spits; a mixture of bile and bloody vomit. "Now tell me," he wipes his mouth and staggers drunkenly to his feet, "What is the meaning of this?"
A harsh laugh follows his words, a bark — an animal-like sound. And for a moment, silence is the only answer to grace the question. Then slowly, from the depths of the impenetrable darkness cloaking the enclosure around him and the bodiless speaker, loud, uneven footsteps announce someone's — or, he hates to think something's — arrival.
"The meaning? You know the meaning. You know why you're here, murderer." There is spite in each raspy syllable, palatable loathing. And as the speaker slips into Kurama's field of vision, an apparent disgusted look graces the thing's — there is no other word for it — face.
The being is not human, that much is all too apparent, Kurama notes as he takes in the green skin, dry and sloughing in places, which hangs in folds from its body like rags and second-hand clothing more than a few sizes too large. Its eyes are small beads of yellow, with the milky-white sheen of a cataract obscuring one of them, and both are nearly lost beneath folds of lagging flesh. It wears something barely passable for clothing; a stained and tattered loin cloth hangs from its hips, a piteous waste of fabric. And to him — it appears to be a him, at least — clings the foul stench of urine and feces. The sight alone is enough to make Kurama heave, and the smell, pungent and horrible, is enough to raise the bile in the back of his throat in the promise of another wave of nausea.
"You mean to tell me," Kurama begins tightly, grinding out the words, "that I am being held captive? A prisoner in Reikai?" He stares disbelievingly at the creature before him, partially obscured by darkness, partially by the bars that seemed to materialize between them; a telltale indication of his separation from the rest of the world.
"You do have a brain, then," wheezes out the creature in a cackling laugh. "Too bad you're just now using it, though."
"What are you saying?" Kurama shakes his head, not understanding. And between the grating pain in his skull as he moves it and the nausea welling in his gut, pell-mell thoughts skitter across his mind: Why is he here? Why is he being held captive in some of the worst prison conditions Reikai in all its splendor and magnitude has to offer?
"Those poor ningens, boy. What do you think I'm saying?" the creature quips back, his voice growing angry, annoyed at his captive's ignorance.
"False allegations," Kurama spits back sharply, getting readily tired of being accused of the murder of these supposed six mortals. "Why do you keep saying I murdered these people? Tell me." Venom literally oozes from each syllable.
"Because Reikai surveillance saw you, boy. Enma isn't stupid; he knows the last month unhinged you. You've been being watched this whole time." The creature shakes his scabbed head and graces Kurama with another scathing look. "Good thing, I guess."
The last month unhinged you…
The words bounce across the vastness of his skull, eschewing his thoughts and ushering in a static fit of white noise to fill the void. It takes a moment for the creature's statement to register; for the words to form a concrete, valid meaning.
His knees go weak and any of the strength he had regained from his bout of heaving flees his body in a rush. Before he is aware of it his knees are stinging and his fists have pounded into the stone floor supporting his crumbling form. Shakes wrack his body, violent tremors starting up from his fingertips and vibrating over his whole drawn in form. His voice is loud — louder than the buzzing in his ears, that damnable static that drowns out his own thoughts — and the tremor is noticeable there too, as he speaks:
"Unhinged… No…"
There is a pause, then a shaky intake of breath and an exhalation in quick succession. His fingers clench against the stone, groping to cling to everything, but finding nothing. But he seems unaware to the mindless groping, his fingertips bruising in their harried attempts to find something to hold on to.
The shaking in uncontrollable now, his vision blurs and he cannot see clearly before him. The creature is swimming in front of his eyes, laughing. The harsh sound is loud and wretched above the noise screaming in his own head.
"I am not unhinged" A strangled laugh falls from his lips, and even to his own ears his voice sounds distant, unfamiliar.
His blood is on fire, searing through his veins. The pain in his head is nothing compared to this — the feeling of daggers sheering through his veins, lancing them open and bleeding him out from the inside. Each angry palpation of his heart is exaggerated, his chest exploding with each new pulse and his ribs feel ready to burst through him. His skin is tingling, that stage where everything is cold to the point of burning and just before numbness lays claim to the pins and needles of poor circulation.
The buzzing in his head is unbearable but he cannot find his voice to scream above the storm raging inside him.
"No… I am… not… unhinged…" he clenches out, voice strangled. Blood drips to the floor, but his eyes are beyond seeing, and his lips are numb. He does not feel the tissue rend, takes no notice of the blood on the stones before him.
Shiori is smiling, laughing at something, and Hatanaka is sitting beside her in the next seat. He isn't there, but somehow he knows she's smiling. She was always smiling, always laughing about something. It is no more than a puddle jumper — a commercial plane — so Shuuichi is sitting in the row behind them. He isn't there but he knows this fact, given that he had given the plane tickets to his family. It wasn't much, just tickets to a flight to Sapporo to enjoy the natural springs. A gift for Shiori and Hatanaka's first wedding anniversary. He hadn't gone.
He should have.
An explosion rocks the plane and a ball of red heat envelopes the back compartments. The other passengers' happily-expectant looks turn to terror. The smile flickers from Shiori's face, turning into a stunned look and then…
It goes black.
And all that's left is the afterimage of her smiling face plastered to the insides of his eyelids…
And he screams as the static crescendos in his skull and all at once the pain, the numbness, every last fleeting emotion and non-emotion is gone leaving only the humming silence in its wake.
After a moment of silence, as the buzzing dies down inside of him and feeling slowly floods back into his extremities, he unclenches his eyes only to find himself staring at the pinpricks of blood littering the floor beneath him. Bewildered, he shakes his head to clear his mind, because the silence is suddenly overpowering and nothing makes sense, and a spray of silver hair whips around him, cascading into his face.
"Wh-what on Earth?" There is shock in the creature's startled voice, and just enough fear to send a ripple of pleasure chasing down Kurama's bowed spine. The sound is sharp, ringing in his ears and his senses are ablaze; he isn't bothered with why.
"I'm not unhinged, you blathering fool." A roll of deep laughter, a drastic change from his usual tenor, falls from his lips and a delicately evil smile curls them upwards. He doesn't bother looking at the creature, isn't sure he should grace the creature with a look, just keeps his head bowed. A silken waterfall of silver hair ripples around him as his shoulders rise in a chorus of deep, melancholic laughs and he finishes the thought: "I'm grieving."
"This is why we've been keeping you under surveillance, Kurama." The familiar tone glides in on the stale air and is followed by the gentle pit-pat of soled footsteps.
He looks up just in time to see the man from which the words came glide into the room. The man is familiar — almost to an annoying degree, and the expression on his face is not so unfamiliar, either. A deep growl reverberates in the back of his throat, a dull sort of hum that drones through the enclosure.
"Koenma," is his greeting, accompanied by a sharp, piercing glare.
The said figure nods, a mess of auburn hair bobbing around his eyes as he acknowledges the greeting. He replies smoothly, "Kurama," with another curt nod. "Or should I say Youko?"
Author's Ramblings: Okay, here is the second chapter. Don't you just love this recent, new update speed? Ah, well. If any of you noticed, this chapter sort of changed tenses on you. The first chapter is all written along the lines of "he said," as in, past tense. This chapter I went for "he says," as in, present tense. I did this not to confuse you guys - the readers and potential reviewers - but rather, I did it because I'd like to hear from you guys which tense you think seems to flow better for the progression of this story. Personally, I say present. But that's just me. Opinions? And just to clear this up, depending on the responese to the tense question, I will either change the first to match the second, or vice-versa so that everything ends up agreeing before we go into chapter III. Also, this is sort of a filler chapter I threw in to do this little tense test. It was supposed to go into exactly why he's being charged and all that fun stuff where he gets to stand off against monsieur Koenma, but alas, you'll have to wait for chapter III for that. For now, live with the word fluff, or don't. The choice is solely yours. But, either way, and as always, please leave your names at the door, honest opinions intact. Please?
Aside: I am looking for another BETA-reader, or two, as I'd like to get more than just Dillio's opinion on how things should go. If anyone is willing to help, send along a resume to my email, eh?
Blackrose