Alright! This is where it all starts to pick up! Thank you all for reading, as usual.
On with it, then!
KAKASHI
IT'S COLD.
I'm in some weird place, sitting behind bars. Outside, there's no sunlight, and I can hear thunder. God, I hate it.
My legs feel heavy. Heavy, like, I haven't stood in years. There're blankets and a worn stuffed hippo placed around me. The lock of a mahogany door in the corner rattles.
And in comes Master Jiraiya.
"Hey," another voice rattles me, "c'mon, honey."
Oba? I look around, but she's nowhere to be found. I make eye contact with Jiraiya. He's not moving, just watching me. My heart races. I have the strange compulsion to burst into tears.
Like an echo, he shakes his head at me. "More trouble than you're worth."
Asshole. I'd like to tell him off, but I just...don't.
"Kakashi." There's a light pressure on my side, but there's nothing there. "Please, wake up."
I am awake. Dammit, someone's messing with me. Oba's always screws around with me whenever she feels like it. Simple, classic things - like leaving a full bucket on top a door or tickling my face when I'm sleeping so I'll be covered in whipped cream. Sometimes mustard.
This has to be some genjutsu atmosphere prank. She's taking things up a notch, I guess. I want to yell at her that the joke's over with, but nothing comes out. I doubt she'd use any jutsu on me like that. I can smell her, little spectacles of her scent mingling in the air. But...she wouldn't do this to me.
Master steps away from me and I can hear Oba calling in the distance. But then everything goes black.
An all-too-familiar beeping becomes louder and louder. I'm sore everywhere. God, I feel like I'd been hit by a car. Multiple times. "...ashi?"
Oba sounds closer now. I force my eyes to open, strength faltering each time they fall. I can see her hair - who can't? - but other than that, everything else is blurry. My brain is pounding against my skull. My heart is like a radar, sending messages of pain through my body.
"C'mon, honey," Oba, strangely, pleads, "don't do this again." What's going on? I try to speak, to say her name, but my voice is scratchy disaster. It seems to get the job done, though, because he pops up immediately. She's sitting by my legs on the bed.
My vision restores, and I can see specks of lingering hope in her violet eyes. Her face is a totally different story: the presences of the urge to leap off a two-story roof and of the urge to grovel on her knees to the Lord in her expression are as obvious as blood on a killer's hands.
"Ob...a..." I manage to get out. Voice is a train wreck, but I think she needs to hear it to calm down a bit. I just noticed, there's a needle in my chest. Holy crap, it's sending something cold into my body...! Jesus, this is actually starting to sting-
"Kakashi?" Oba notices my panic, and touches my arm. "You're okay. I promise you. How do you feel?"
"Fine...just fine." I lie. "Here in the hospital again, huh?" My dismissive attitude makes her sigh in relief, flashing the tiniest smile. I try to smile, but the oxygen mask is too heavy. I take a good look at her. "You look like...a deer caught in headlights."
We both laugh quietly. "You think you're funny, don't you?" I nod slowly, holding back a painful smile. "Maybe you're right." she agrees.
Something strange lingers in the air between us. Like, that churning feeling I get when Oba glowers at me. Except, she's not, instead it's almost switched. After our small joke, she looks down and away from me with a disheartening, almost melancholy darkness in her expression.
Perhaps it's the hospital atmosphere. This place is depressing as hell. Families standing by, grasping with chaffed hands onto elusive hope, sending out bribery for miracles and labeling them prayers. Recurring victims being shoved from room to room, being poked and prodded at under a magnifying glass. Fighting, because that's all they know.
Death floats over everyone's head. But that's not the worst part. What's worse is remission - when you have to muster up strength from the scraps of what is shattered for the next time, when you have to tighten the strings on the mask you have to wear to keep a strong face. Standing when you want to sit; smiling when you want to cry. All that, while awaiting the agony to come - the next time. All that, when YOU want to just pull the plug.
Oba and I are mute for another couple of minutes. I listen to my heart beating still, my breathing growing steady. Her worry increasing. I raise an eyebrow at her. "You look like you committed one of the sins."
"Probably."
"What?"
"I did something," she rationalizes, "something to piss Him off. It's karma, and He's taking it out on you." I doubt that's how karma works, if it exists. God probably got hell-bent over the beer I had last month.
"You're being dramatic." I say to her, sinking deeper in my pillow, closing my eyes. Submitting to the medicine's bite. My IV makes some weird sound - like a click - and releases something down the tubes. The needle taped down on the top of my hand stings. I can feel whatever this liquid is surging through my body. "When can we leave?"
"When the doctor says." Oba replys, back to her usual self. Finally. I was afraid she'd give herself a migraine. I feel sleep pulling me in.
I frown, because that's all I can manage to do now. "But I'm fine."
"Good. We'll see what the doctor has to say first, okay?"
Why does she always get her way? When there's an assault charge, the entire investigation should function at the victim's pace, fast or slow, not the bystander's or anyone else. Not even the parents of that person, minor or not. "Can't you just call him?"
"Kakashi. This is important."
"Fine." I give up, purposely making my voice sharp. After a while, I blatantly add, "I can handle this. You don't have to baby me."
Honestly, when I say things like that, I'm scared to hear the response. So why do I do it? Well, to be brief, I don't even know. It just comes out when it's convenient. Maybe it's just me, being an ass as always...
Oba doesn't answer, and it kills me. She must be tired. Done. Instead, when I open an eye, she sighs, looks down, then in the direction of the labs. An apology creeps up my throat, in exchange for my pride. Pride wins, and shoves it back down.
A balding doctor, thank God, comes in in a hurry. He skims through some papers. "Alright, Kakashi," he says, drained, "you feeling good?"
"Mm-hm." I answer. Not lying this time - I'm actually starting to feel okay. Just tired as all hell, but other than that, nothing serious.
"Well, you look good." He smiles at me. I try to give him one back, but just nod instead. "You seem to have had a moderate seizure. Don't worry, nothing's fatally affected. But we do want to order some more tests. Your aunt has the papers."
I glance at Oba, who's probably irritated with me and doesn't want to look my way. A nurse comes in a quickly removes the IV from my hand. It stings for a bit, but that's better than having the needle in.
"You take it easy, alright?" the trauma doctor leaves with the nurse.
Oba stands and starts helping me sit up, barely touching me. Sitting up is like passing through a vortex. A whole new dimension. I'm forced into a fuzzy giddy of dizziness and nausea. The room and Oba start spinning one way, my body the other. My hands are shaking.
"Honey." The blurred image focuses on Oba. I can only make out her hair, no facial detail. I squint at her in response. I see her shake her head. "God, what happened?"
We sit there for a moment to let this stupor pass.
At home, the power goes out. So, Oba brings me to the master bedroom and lights a bunch of candles. The candles set a lethargic tone in here, dim and quiet. I am dozing off when she brings me some leftover chicken and vegetables from last week's hot pot with miso soup.
"Here." She sets them on a tray and places it before me.
"Are you sure it's okay for me to be eating on the bed?" I ask. "And in the dark?"
Oba settles with her own dinner next to me. "Of course it is. You just focus on getting your face fed and your butt to sleep."
"Yeah, okay."
I inhale my food and feel myself drifting off to sleep before she even finishes.
It's dark. I'm awake, but I can't see. The air is tight, suffocating, like when you curl up under a heavy blanket without any openings for too long. Trying to see, I look around to spot a series of candles mounted in the air in the shape of a cross.
There's a Bible and a rusting letter opener on a small round table under it. I keep peering around. Graphic pictures of Jesus withstanding various forms of brutality hang like trophies on the shelves above. They're kind of creepy.
It hits me; I'm in the same damn place I swore I would never return to. Erika's prayer closet at my old house. My prison cell.
I have wasted most of my early childhood here. Being punished for being born. Erika would jump at any chance she got to lock me in here. I would forget to say please or thank you, and next thing I know, I'm banging my head against the floor. Being tossed in like a trash bag. I'm cancer, after all.
Sakumo never knew about it, and I could never bring myself to tell him. Doesn't matter. He wouldn't listen. After all, Erika was just so perfect and the love of his life.
And I'm their bastard child. Ask anyone: how many kids get to attend their parents' wedding? What's even more ridiculous, those idiots divorced when I was four. Four years of a bullshit marriage, and they still couldn't figure their lives out. They divorced, but lived together in the same house. It'd be selfish and ridiculous to say they did that for me. So much for "till death due us part."
The door rips open. And I see Erika's silhouette standing there. Skinny as hell, pale as death. Eyes devoid of everything, but hate and disgust. Last time I saw her, she was dead in my arms. My bloody arms.
Fear and resentment bubble in my chest and I can't breathe. I want to scream at her, to throw punches at her and tell her to leave me the hell alone.
But, just as I remember, she comes down to my eye level and starts curling my hair around her finger. No signs of affection are present in her eyes, though. She's just...inspecting.
"Have you said your prayers, child?" Ugh, her voice is killing me. So annoying and sickening. I want to vomit in memory of this crap.
I stare at her, not answering. Regardless, she smiles wickedly. Like a snake. Then, right when I feel like I can trust her, like I can let her touch me, she bashes the side of my head with a Bible.
It always repeats.
Please R&R!
