On A Light Note
Chapter Three: Heart Attack
A Big thanks to everyone and those of you who have commented and reviewd. This chapter is very raw and I need a hug.
Bleep-Beeep-Beep
Light blindly slammed his hand about searching for the alarm. Rather, that's the course of action he would have taken. Instead, his arms lay heavy and immobile like 15 ton weights.
Load fifteen tons what do you get- Bleep-Beeep- Bleep
The incessant noise interrupted his stunning mental song reiteration.
It was at that moment he also noticed the sound of the Spice Girls wasn't filling the room with its abominable racket. The alarm had been another casualty of Sayu sabotage.
He still hadn't managed to figure out how she had rewired the damn thing.
Light wished he had better weighed the cost versus benefits of giving his little sister a room key.
The Spice Girls only just managed passable humor and not much else.
The sound of distant voices grew close, then closer still. Some phantom thought haunted his mind, but the harder he tried to focus the more it dissolved into black and white spaced confusion. His temple pounded. A desert storm brewed grit and sand within his mouth and left dust caught about his throat in its wake.
He didn't manage to swallow, light crept in and he found it strange for he never forgot to close the blinds. He sucked in a shaky breath then another in rapid succession.
BEeeeeep-Bllleeeeep-Beeep fired off the sound from his left.
Light groaned.
From somewhere footsteps echoed sharply off of tile flooring.
His mind made the connection and his eyes cracked open further.
He is immediately forced to squeeze them shut against the assaulting brightness.
The smell of cheap cleaning products and an underlying scent of wrongness circles the air.
It invades the senses and borders on revolution there is something to sterile, clinical about it. "Doctor are you sure-"
Light listens closely. So closely so intensely he can hear his pulse then the machines racket.
The footsteps paused at the door.
His heart hammered and the sound screeched in loud shrill intervals betraying him.
BEEEEP-Bleeeep-Beeereeeep.
His lashes fluttered, lights on, lights off.
The door creaked open. a man peered over him.
Women with a business like sound to the squeak - squeak of her sneakers trudged over to his right humming as she messed with something beyond his vision. Too late his eyelids grew heavy and faintly he recognized the dosage on his iv must have been upped.
A wasn't it insensitive of the women to be humming the funeral march, in a hospital no less?
Light didn't float suspended in darkness. He sort of lay surrounded by infinite black. It wasn't a slow submergence, but a stomach abandoning free fall. He doesn't even get the chance to feel undignified. Red crosses his vision. He is running scrambling away from some horrid monster and its breath is twisted, rotten to the core.
He can just make out it's humanoid shape within the dark. Scarlet eyes mock him. The face is some players mask, an imitation of sorrow or rage. Lips curved, morphing into an ugly countenance of unbridled menace - Then nothing, till light again.
He has the urge to laugh hysterically or cry. It's a close tie.
Raito being rational mind resist the urge to stamp his foot like a child.
The impossibility of the act makes the urge all, but null and void that and the screaming in his ear makes it impossible to act let alone think.
One does not simply block out their younger sister when she is in full rant.
One certainly does not ignore said sister when she is Sayu Yagami, nor leave her unattended for large amounts of time. "Have you any idea what you were thinking?" She brandished a finger at him angrily. He gulped and searched to answer.
"Yes?" She huffed winding up ."Enlighten me then big brother" oh in that case…
"I was just" Her eyes narrowed her frame trembled in the doorway.
Too late he notes the firm clench of her jaw, the wrong answer.
"Just not thinking that's it isn't it? " Sayu sighed the fight seemed to drain from her and she came even closer to him than before. " No, you were thinking weren't you ni-san " her breath was shaky and words solid but filled with soft vehemence a kind of slow poison that quietly erodes belief.
It's a silent ill that creeps with a glacier's strength.
This erosion that has tumbled much less then trust far more easily does quick work. But his younger sister is far too used to being underestimated.
She doesn't cloak herself in his shadow, she entwines herself with it. To the point, he sometimes wonders how she doesn't just choke.
He has briefly forgotten how Sayu has always smiled with a light far truer to his namesake then he ever has.
This is one thing she will forever outshine him in.
Unfortunately for him at the moment she is following the same train of thought.
There is no dramatic drawing together of brows when she reaches her conclusion just a broken voice growing in resolve.
" I'm right, you were thinking, thinking too much that is.."
She moved as if a leaf blown from the branch and swept to the floor, carelessly discarded. Without her indigence, she seems somehow less of an unstoppable force of nature and more the 18 she should be, Ganguly and unsure as she lingers beside him.
There is a brief silence, he lets her war with herself, it's a private thing the battle of head and heart.
Besides, at her age hormones know how to deliver a truly nasty sucker punch.
Finally, she settles on his bed and plays with the folds of the thin blue hospital issue blanket. "They say it was the stress" She dares him to counter.
Dares him to disagree with them.
Because he cannot remember, because he is a being of logic not instinct he doesn't.
The light clears his throat "Too much school work."
Why does the truth suddenly feels close to a blatant lie?
The known truth he corrects himself. The known truth.
For they both know someone this young doesn't just have a heart attack.
Things like these don't happen out of the blue to healthy even college diet healthy people in their twenties.
Heart disease is hereditary and even then-
Sayu flings herself at him and buries her head in his chest.
She grips him tightly, almost too tightly as if he might fade away or slip from her grasp.
For a moment, he is still tense then tentatively he wraps his arms around her in return.
"I know " is but an unspoken whisper.
Her face unreadable hidden between them.
In their way, she is crying or coming as close to it as a Yagami sibling every will.
With a start, he realizes as he cradles her to him he is too. Their parents aren't bad, their parents.
Mom is the classic housewife with a penchant for shoving her son in an apron and telling him real men cook and he will thank her someday. Dad is, for the most part, absent.
He has an unbroken record of missed family dinner night for going on a running ten year beyond what light can recall.
That just what being Chief of police entails. Soichiro Yagami tries.
It's clear early on that he will never be an A++ parent.
He is gruff sometimes almost harsh.
He isn't alway right, no one ever is. But he is Justice. Light thinks and while he may not be a dad he is their father.
His thoughts thrum a messy tempo.
Everything is jumbled worse than a traffic snarl after five pm when simply everyone must be somewhere right this instant.
The blinding white before his mind's eye startles him and the dark might paralyze him.
But for her he is here. " Next time," She says.
It isn't even a question. She will not be left behind. She may play his shadow, but she is his light.
"Next time" he replies, it's a promise.
Hours later he clocks out of the Hospital.
It hardly seems that long since had Light hastily signed off on the last piece of paper from a stack that felt more redundant as you went along, then he was back at the dorm. It was dark the soft hum of a laptop that sounded as if it might take flight greeted him. He places the game console (his old Xbox) on the counter.
Something he had apparently requested from sayu before everything had gotten out of hand. It jogged no memories. This temporary amnesia was starting.
To prove annoying more so than it had when it took him five minutes to figure out which key he used (because all of them had of course been meticulously coded ) and not mind you helpfully coded by the color stickies on them.
Now in the dark apartment unease threatened.
Ridiculous what was he three? Light turned his attentions back to the airplane in progress lap top. He would start there.
He walked the five steps to the table. The black screen reflected his pale features like a mirror.
The mouse was also a shiny black reflecting his gleaming hair.
He couldn't resist the temptation any longer he reached his hand out stopping to fix the strand of hair.. Another few feet his fingers latched down on the wireless mouse like a lifeline anticipation heavy he took a deep breath and *click*. His eyes widened a mixture of ultimate horror, shock, and disbelief coloring his features.. Another minute ticked by and Light composed himself. Before looking again. *click*
He frowned slightly, then *click* once more and still nothing.
Twenty minutes later a Yagami Raito received a call about a noise complaint. No, a permanent mark would not be placed on his record. Yes, this was his first warning and would be marked the bored officer reassured him and could he please shut up already and stop all that screaming, thank you have a nice night. *click*