A/N: Hey all! This update is for the prompt- wash. nightshadegirl, thanks so much for keeping up. As always, please read and review!


7. The New Stare

Hikari spends the night in a sort of stupor, alternating between imagining the rain and sleeping. Neither come easy with the lines flashing under her eyelids when she rolls in the direction of the door, but she manages a little of the latter. The storm her mind conjures is little more than dark clouds and raindrops, but it's something, she hopes when she finally drifts off to sleep. Is it her imagination, or are the lines a little dimmer than before?

She thinks on this the next day, and imagines the storm once more. She looks outside and thinks of rain on the window panes, of clouds darkening the blue sky to gray. She smiles a little, suddenly hearing the pattering over the windows as the clouds made their way slowly past the hospital window.

"Hikari-chan?"

The hand on her shoulder makes her jump and she turns, the storm fading from her mind's eye. She slows her racing heart and smiles. "Mom!"

She isn't sure what it is, but her mother's face relaxes at the sheer delight Hikari gives her. What was wrong? Had she worried her yesterday? "How are you feeling?" she says before Hikari can ask.

Hikari thinks about it. "Mm…" She thinks about coughing and finds her chest is less tight, letting her breath. "Better," she says, looking around. "Onii-chan is…?"

"At practice," her mother replies and perhaps that's where the wrongness is, in that her mother looks bothered by something. "Dad's talking to the doctor right now."

"Un." Hikari somehow feels disinterested, like the dismissing of her brother is also dismissing her and something about that isn't comforting. "Am I going home?"

"A couple more days," Mom says, her voice a little tight. "You were in a coma for a year, Hikari-chan. You woke up from it rather quickly too. They're going to have to set up some tests, help you recover motor strength."

Hikari has very little idea what that means, but she figures it's why her arms have been hurting every time she's moved them or why she wants to sleep just from rolling her head. So she accepts that and closes her eyes. She wants to imagine it raining again. That sounds much better than looking at the look on her mother's face, which seems so sad and unhappy.

"Hikari-chan."

"Un?" She opens her eyes, a little cross about that.

"Are you angry at Taichi?"

Hikari blinks. "Why would I be?"

For some reason, her mother doesn't answer. Again with this adult thing of not answering questions, not even when the answers are important, especially when it is about Taichi, who she hasn't seen in what feels like hours to her but has been a whole year to them, she hasn't seen anyone, anything but that void, the place where every color is everything and all of them are not there at all.

She opens her eyes and breathes and her mother starts.

"Hikari… your eyes?"

Hikari rubs them, and finds nothing. She looks towards the water glass sitting innocently on the table and blinks, more puzzled than afraid.

Her eyes are blue, a brilliant shade of blue with multiple shades of red branching from the pupils like a growing tree.

Like Rio's, she thinks.

Only somehow, so much darker.

Her mother leaves to get the doctor, and Hikari only shuts her eyes to the lines and thinks of the rain. Maybe she will be able to imagine a hurricane now.

Her head is full of storm clouds.