I'm began this chapter while waiting to get… wait for it… ON A PLANE! I hadn't been on a plane in six years, guys! And even more exciting – that was my first time flying all alone. No supervision. No nothing. But I made it, obviously, and it was my intention to finish this chapter much sooner than I did, except for I left home for a week to see the boyfriend and when I got back I had to throw myself back into life, which included two jobs and repacking all of my belongings for my return to college.
Disclaimer: If you hadn't guessed by now, I own no rights to Ouran. I just praise the powers that be that the people who do let writers like myself use their characters!
It was too bright for her. So much light everywhere. At home she was always kept in the dark, and any light she did find herself in was dim and never lasted for very long. Sometimes Master would keep the lights on when he used her. She had never liked it when he did that. She didn't like Master. He was big and his face was always scratchy, and he hurt her when he used her.
She didn't like the people here, either. She didn't know where she was, exactly, but it was too bright everywhere. It hurt her eyes. She remembered that there were things called hospitals, and she remembered being in one before going to see… someone, she couldn't remember who, but this didn't really feel like the hospital she'd been inside. The people here wore a bright color; yellow, her mind registered. It had been a long time since she'd had to make sense of colors. And they made her wear clothes too. She wasn't used to clothes. She could remember that she used to wear them, all the time, but not since Master. He didn't want her to wear clothes, so she didn't.
She didn't like it when the people here touched her, either. She had barely tolerated Master's touch, whenever he did, which was usually just before and during the Using. And if she ever shrunk away, he'd hurt her. Hit her or locked her up without food or water for a long time. Until her stomach hurt like she was going to be sick but worse, and her throat was dry and she was so weak she could barely move.
So when all these strange people wearing yellow tried to approach her, she shrunk away and panicked. Skin-to-skin contact made her remember the Usings she had endured, and she hated those, and she had never had the luxury to scream before when Master touched her, but here they didn't hit her when she shouted. They hadn't touched her after she screamed until she started digging her nails into her skin. Because she could feel it on her still, all those times Master had touched her, held her so she couldn't move, and she wanted that feeling gone. She wanted to tear it off.
That's when the people in yellow grabbed her. Forced her into a room and onto a bed and they put straps on her wrists and ankles, like Master had done sometimes except for there was no Using when the people in yellow did it to her; they tried to talk to her. The girl understood words. She didn't speak many, but she understood quite a lot, when she listened. Master never liked her to listen to his unless he was about to Use her, so she tuned words out most of the time. She tried to tune out the people in yellow, but she didn't think they wanted to be tuned out. They were saying nice things. Asking her to be calm. But she didn't want to be calm. She was in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people and she still wanted to tear off the memory of Master's hands on her body but they wouldn't let her.
They gave her food, too, but she didn't trust it. She never got food in the kind of amounts the people in yellow kept trying to give her unless she was in for a particularly long and awful Using. She was sure there was a reason for all the food, and one she wouldn't like. So when they brought the food she investigated it, maybe ate a bite, but left the rest untouched.
She didn't like taking the pills they gave her, either. She had to swallow the small multicolored pellets whole, without chewing them. She hated the feeling. But it was better than the terrible taste it left in her mouth if she did attempt to keep them in her mouth longer than a couple of seconds. She tried to stop taking those too.
The result was awful. The people in yellow tied her down again, stuck needles in her. She kept hearing one of the people in yellow, a woman with long hair that curled at the end saying they were feeding her through them. But she didn't want that. She didn't want them to feed her. If she was well fed Master would come back and Use her again, a long and painful Using that she didn't want. They forced the pills into her mouth, too, and she had to swallow them or else the terrible taste would hang in her mouth for hours.
She wasn't sure how long exactly it went on like that. Days and nights had become meaningless with Master, who had always kept her in the dark. She had a near panic attack her first night at this new place when she looked through the window and the sun had gone out. She was sure the world was ending. The people in yellow kept telling her it was as it should be, that it got dark like that every night. To their credit, they had been right. The sun had returned to the sky the next morning, and gone away again the next night, and it went on like that. The girl didn't worry about the sun going away anymore. As a matter of fact, she decided she liked the moon better. It didn't hurt her eyes when she stared at it.
She remembered how to count, but she wasn't very good at keeping track. She thought maybe the sky got dark seven or eight times before something interesting happened that didn't involve being tied down or needles or being forced to swallow her pills. She was sitting in the room the yellow people had said was hers – a room to herself! She wasn't used to that much space! – with her knees pulled into her chest, tugging absentmindedly at the white gown the people in yellow told her she had to wear, sitting on the bed staring out her small window when one of the people in yellow came in and told her she had a visitor. She didn't remember that word's meaning, visitor. It had been years since she'd heard it.
"Someone's here to see you, dear" the woman said, explaining the word.
The girl gasped and shrunk back, whimpering. Her shoulders dug into the wall behind her and her hands went to the sheets of her bed, clutching fitfully at them. Master had come back for her. She knew it. He told her she'd never get away, and there was never a promise Master had made that he hadn't kept. He'd come to take her back and Use her, over and over again because they'd been feeding her and she would have the energy to take it. She whimpered and buried her face behind her knees, shaking her head violently.
"It's no one who's going to hurt you," the woman said quickly, seeing the girl's sudden and alarming change in demeanor and sensing the reason for her reluctance. "It's Miss Jonochi. Do you remember her? The lady who took you from that… house," she finished rather blandly. She hated to think about it, just like the rest of the staff. "She's brought someone with her. Someone who wants to take you in. You'd get to leave and go live in their house. Wouldn't that be nice?"
The girl recognized all those words the woman was speaking, but didn't comprehend their meaning entirely. She heard leave, and nice, and the name of the woman who'd brought her to the white building where the yellow haired doctor with the purple eyes had examined her like Master had often liked to do, except the blonde man had done it differently. He was gentler. And he had been quick. He didn't even seem to like doing it. She didn't understand. If he didn't like it, why did he do it? Was someone forcing him to, like when she didn't want to eat or take her pills and they forced her to?
But still, he had hurt her again. Pushed the speculum inside her and opened her wide, stretching her, and it hurt. She had always hurt down there, and that never failed to make it feel worse. But she had noticed in the last week that she didn't hurt so much. Hardly at all anymore. She thought it was because she hadn't been used in the last seven or eight days, but now that she was thinking about the yellow haired doctor, Miss Jonochi had told her he had asked her to give the girl medicine so she wouldn't feel so bad anymore.
Maybe… maybe he wasn't so bad after all. But that still didn't change the fact that he'd hurt her, and she couldn't trust people who hurt her. If she did, she'd just get used again.
The girl considered what the woman wearing yellow said. She did want to leave this place. Maybe in another place she wouldn't have to take pills or have needles poked into her wrists and elbows when she wouldn't eat. So she nodded once, a slight jerk of her head, and turned back to the small window. All she could see through it was a patch of blue sky, but after what had seemed like forever without it, even that small view was a comfort.
She wasn't very good at measuring time passing, so she didn't know how long it was before the woman wearing yellow returned with the Jonochi woman whose hair was pulled away from her face and who wore glasses, and behind her was—
The girl reeled back, almost toppling off her bed before scrambling to the floor and crouching behind it, tears stinging at her eyes to behold the other person who'd come into the room, the one the woman in yellow had said wanted to take her home. She just hadn't realized it had been him.
"Bad," she croaked out. It had been a while since she'd spoken any words. Her voice was rough. "Bad doctor! No!"
The blonde man knelt down, holding up his hands, and the girl winced, expecting a blow. That's what raised hands always meant. But nothing came. The blonde man didn't move to hit her like Master did. He just stayed there, looking at her, with his hands up. Like he was… submitting. That was the word. Master had always told her to submit. No one had ever submitted to her, though. She gazed back at the blonde man in awe, unsure of what to do. She was sure now he didn't want to hurt her. Not again. And he wasn't wearing his white coat anymore, the one he was wearing when he'd examined her. Maybe the coat meant an examination. So if he wasn't wearing it, she didn't have to worry about that.
He started speaking. He sounded… sad. He was quiet. He was gentle. And he was apologizing. Hadn't he been apologizing the last time? But she hadn't wanted to listen then, because he had hurt her. "I'm sorry I hurt you last week," he said. The girl didn't take her eyes off of him. He sounded like he meant it. Could she trust that? "I know you're scared, and I know that I'm probably not the person you want to see right now. But I'd like to… help. I'd like to get you out of here."
Those were the magic words. Out. As in taking her outside. She wanted to see the world again. Feel the green stuff on the ground between her toes again. The name had escaped her in the past several years, but she remembered the feel of it. She wanted to see the rest of the sky, and not just the squares of it through the various windows of the rooms she was allowed into.
The girl rose to her feet cautiously, crawling back onto the bed and staring at the blonde man with wide, suspicious eyes. "Outside?" she asked.
The blonde man looked surprised for just a moment, and then he smiled and nodded. "Yes. That's right. Outside."
The word yes was not something she had heard often. Everything with Master had always been no. Don't sit there, don't do that, don't shrink away, don't fight me. All she'd ever seemed to hear from him was no. But this man, the blonde man in front of her who didn't want to hurt her anymore… he was saying yes. He wanted to give her the world, or at least it felt like that to her. The chance to see the world again, and that was everything to her. But she needed more. One more yes. A stronger one. "Promise?" she whispered.
The blonde man looked shocked for a moment, and then he smiled at her. "Yes, honey," he said. "I promise. I have a nice big yard with grass and flowers, and you can go outside whenever you want."
"Grass," the girl repeated. That was the word she couldn't remember before, the green stuff that grew on the ground. And flowers. She barely remembered what those looked like anymore. She remembered that she liked them, before Master. But that was pretty much the only thing she could remember of flowers.
She was trying very hard to remember what a flower was, but her thoughts were interrupted when the blonde man began to speak again. "What do you say, little one? Would you like to get out of here and come with me?"
She bit the inside of her cheek. Leaving this place with the people in yellow who forced her to swallow pills and stuck needles in her when she wouldn't eat. Seeing outside. He'd said she could go outside whenever she wanted. What she wanted hadn't been a factor of her life for a long, long time. Not since before Master. And this man didn't seem to want to hurt her. Quite the opposite, actually. But still, she could never be sure anymore. "Safe?" she asked.
"Yes," the man said at once. He sounded very sure of that. The girl was comforted by that. "It is perfectly safe. I promise."
The girl made a soft noise. She felt the corner of her lips twitch. What was that called? Smiling? It had been an eternity since she'd smiled. But she was almost sure she was doing it now. She crawled off the bed and approached the blonde man. He'd never risen. He was still kneeling, so when she went to him his head was lower than hers. She stopped a few inches from him, staring. His gaze met hers, and he rose so he was also standing. He was very tall. Much taller than she was. "Home," the girl whispered after several moments of silence, and her voice broke. "Take me home."
And suddenly she was crying, almost painfully. Her body shook with the severity of her sobs, and she heard the blonde man gasp and quite abruptly he was upon her, his arms wrapped around her, and panic briefly registered in her mind before she realized he wasn't trying to hurt her. He was trying to help. Didn't someone used to hold her like this before? She didn't remember who. But she remembered this sensation of being held, and it felt nice. It was very comforting. She tried to remember what she should do, and awkwardly wrapped her arms around the blonde man's waist, burying her face in his shirt and continuing to cry until she couldn't cry anymore. The blonde man pulled away from her but kept his hands on her shoulder, leaning down so his face was at her eye level. He smiled at her, but his eyes were shining, like he was going to cry like she had. "My name is Tamaki," he said. She remembered he'd told her that once before. "And I'm going to make sure that no one ever hurts you again."
Okay, there you go. I'm pretty happy with it.
I'm not certain when my next update will be. I return to college on Saturday and to be honest, right now I'm a lot more interested in getting back into the groove of college life and catching up with my friends (and yes, spending a lot of time with the boyfriend) before I get back into writing again. But this story is NOT OVER. I have lots of ideas and so many things I want from our now-unnamed heroine and Tamaki.
Thank you for reading! I love you all!
Cantica, out!