Matching Scars
Chapter 14
Glow Stick Party
It was raining. Monstrous thunderclouds swirled above the institution and refused to leave. Everything outside was gray and cold, water droplets hitting loudly against the window panes and making them foggy as they ran down the glass and off the building. It seemed as if the whole place would wash away. The stormy conditions had made the troubled teens groggy. The lively atmosphere that was usually present at breakfast was absent, everyone was on energy saving mode. Even BlackStar had changed with the weather. The blue haired boy who was normally jumping about and causing a commotion was quiet, simply eating his food with a tired expression.
"What's with everyone?" Maka asked Soul while she sent an especially concerned look towards BlackStar. "Does the rain really put everyone that out of it?"
The albino nodded, too drowsy to actually open his mouth and speak. And then, confirming Maka's question, Liz threw up her breakfast.
Soon after the staff had taken the elder Thompson sister away to clean her up Soul put his head down on the table and began to groan in pain.
"What's wrong?" Maka asked.
"Headache," was his reply.
"Is it him?" she asked, referring to the demon.
"Yeah, he doesn't like rain…I'm going to go back to my room and sleep for a while," he told her as he wearily rose from his seat.
"Alright," she nodded understandingly. "Feel better."
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO
"Some people, especially the people we have here at the institution, are sensitive to the changes in the weather," Marie explained to Maka later during their session. "Rain can make people sleepy, irritated, depressed… and when you're dealing with adolescents who have mental disorders, well, the affects are more extreme."
"So you're saying that whenever it rains all the patients get really moody?" Maka questioned.
Marie nodded. "We don't really have a schedule when it rains. Usually we'll just put on movies in the T.V. room and let the kids sleep, whatever makes them feel more relaxed."
Maka let this sink in; starting to feel a little blue herself as she thought about how awful her friends must be feeling. Suddenly Crona found his way into her mind. The strange, scrawny boy she had encountered in the shower room last night…how was the rain impacting him? She could see it right now, Crona all alone in his dark room, shivering under a blanket in fear without anyone to brace the storm with. "I hope Crona's alright," the words accidentally slipped from her mouth.
Marie raised a brow in confusion. "Did you just say Crona?"
Maka coughed. "I...uh…yeah."
"You know Crona?"
"I ran into him last night," she told the therapist. "We met in the girl's showers."
"Oh I'm sorry if that frightened you, him being in the girl's showers," Marie apologized, looking incredibly embarrassed. "I gave him permission to go there; it makes him more comfortable you see–"
"No, no, it's completely alright," Maka assured her. "I was…I was just wondering why he's so afraid of people. She paused for a moment then said, "I know you might not know everything because Sid's his therapist but–"
"Actually, Sid's not his therapist," Marie revealed. "Crona sees me instead because he refuses to talk to Sid; it has to do with something about him not being able to deal with big, muscular guys."
"Well that's great," Maka lit up. "You can tell me about Crona now."
Marie shook her head no. "I'm not supposed to give that information out. If he wants to tell you it's one thing but I'm not allowed. It's against our policy here. Words that patients exchange with their therapists are kept secret."
"I want to help him though," Maka told her. "I decided last night after we met that I needed to do something and now, just thinking about him being alone during the rain…well I feel terrible."
"I know you do," Marie sympathized with the teen. "But if you go to his room to talk chances are he's not going to want to see you. Crona…Crona is a very fragile person. If you handle him a certain way he'll crack."
"But last night, last night I told him that I'd be his friend," said Maka, still strong-minded. "And then we shook hands and he even smiled. I have to help him, Marie… he reminds me of myself."
The therapist stared at her patient for a while with unblinking caramel eyes before letting out a small chuckle. "You know, Maka," she began. "After our first session I knew that you were something else. You're such a smart girl, very determined and well, amazing, considering that you're looking to help others when you yourself haven't been completely healed." She stopped and gave a small smile before saying, "Alright, I'll tell you a few things but nothing personal…Crona, which you've probably already guessed, doesn't have just one problem. He suffers from a lot of things; anxiety, depression (like yourself), posttraumatic stress disorder…the list goes on. He doesn't know how to adapt, Maka. He's afraid of new environments, new people, just anything new basically. Getting through to a person like him is hard; he barely even talks to his Aunt Eruka."
"Aunt? Where's his mom?" Maka asked.
Marie gave her a that-topic-is-off-limits look before saying sadly, "it really is awful. If you want my job you have to be prepared for the things you're going to hear but sometimes…anyway, that's really all I can share with you."
"Crona's gone through a lot huh," Maka said softly.
"Yes and I know you have good intentions but the possibility of you changing him in the short amount of time you have left at the hospital, I'd say you have less than a 1% chance," Marie told her.
The pigtailed girl nodded resentfully, hating to accept something she didn't want to be true, and then stood from her seat. The session was over and it was time to leave Marie and her pretty little office and head back to the other troubled teens.
"Don't be angry with me, Maka," Marie said to her on her way out.
"I'm not angry at you," the teen said truthfully. It wasn't Marie's fault things were this way. It wasn't Marie's fault or hers or Crona's. She wasn't upset with a person, she was upset with the universe and how unfair it was. Why did people have to go through such terrible things? Why did people have to deal with depression and anxiety, schizophrenia and eating disorders? Why were people denied a happy life for something that they never wanted? As she sullenly left the office a rumbling flash of light suddenly zipped down from the heavens and crashed against the earth. Patients began to scream in fear of the lightning and the staff rushed around trying to calm everyone down. In the midst of the panic Maka found herself thinking about Crona again, a pink haired boy quivering under the covers of his bed, and she just hoped that she could prove her therapist wrong.
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO
Although the downpour continued steadily Soul's headache was better by dinner and he decided to meet up with Maka on the food line.
"You okay?" she asked, as she piled her tray high with mashed potatoes.
"Yeah," he nodded, shoveling French fries onto his plate. "The throbbing is gone and I finally got it to shut up."
Maka looked at him curiously. "What was it saying to you?"
"I don't even know," he sighed and shook his head. "He kept saying 'rain makes things slippery' or some shit like that."
"Wait…what?" Maka laughed, as they got off the line and started over to their table.
"Maka, half the things he says doesn't have any meaning," Soul told her as they walked. "Back then he used to insult me but now it's either he's giving me advice or he's just bothering me on purpose with a bunch of random crap."
"And he won't go away? Ever?"
"Nope. I've asked him to but he's fucking annoying and refuses to listen to me."
"But…" Maka stopped walking. "If…If he's in your mind doesn't that mean you have control over him? He's made out of your memories and thought of Wes right? Can't you just make him disappear anytime you wanted?"
"It's not that easy, he's…oh no," Soul said, looking up at the ceiling.
"What?" Maka asked.
The white haired boy brought a hand to his forehead and held it there as he let out a moan of pain. "The power's going to go out," he said.
There was an earsplitting humming sound and then everything went black.
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO
Panic set in among the troubled teens. With the lights gone shrieks erupted out of the darkness and the mess hall turned into chaos. Patients began to run around blindly looking for help and the staff tried their best to keep them from smashing into one another.
After a moment of searching Soul found Maka's hand and pulled the pigtailed girl close to him. "Don't move," he said, "Someone might crash into you." Soul then lead her to a nearby table where they put their trays down and sat, hoping to wait out the mayhem.
"Everyone remain calm!" somebody ordered. It was a female voice that Maka soon recognized as Nygus. "Please just find your way to the nearest table and take a seat!"
The head nurse's demanding tone grabbed everyone's attention and slowly but surely the commotion ceased. Everyone in the dining hall was now silent and sitting at a table, waiting for further instruction.
"We're just having some problems with the electricity," Nygus told the group. "There's been a storm all day so it's not surprising the lights went out. Give it a few minutes and I'm sure our staff will have things up and running in no time."
Suddenly there was the sound of the cafeteria's doors being flung open and a male voice announced, "The storm damaged our electrical transmission lines."
There was a murmur throughout the room. "What's that mean?" some kid shouted.
"Children this is Mr. Joe Buttataki, our errand/coffee/handyman guy, I'm sure you've all seen him around," Nygus said to everyone.
Maka nodded (which was pointless because there was a blackout and no one could see her do it) in understanding. She remembered seeing Joe on her first day at the institution during her session with Marie. He was one of her therapist's many ex-boyfriends.
"You guys all heard that big humming noise before right? Well that was the sound of our wires frying," Joe continued on. "Now normally if the electrical power goes out the hospital is supposed to automatically switch over to generators downstairs and run on those but for some reason they won't start up. I already called a repairman on my cell and he should be here in either a few hours or the morning."
The troubled teens began to protest, saying how they couldn't wait that long for the lights to come back. "Everyone hush!" Marie's voice rose over theirs. "We all need to stay organized and be patient so for now everyone should go back to eating their dinners and the staff should go look for flashlights or anything else that will be able to provide us with light."
"Ooh! I have a flashlight!" a loud, arrogant voice called out from across the room. A dim light suddenly flickered on and everyone turned their heads towards the source, BlackStar.
Marie stumbled through the darkness over to the blue haired boy and took the light from him. "Thank you, BlackStar," she said appreciatively. "This will help us get started." The girl's therapist then guided a group of adults out into the hall where they would begin their scavenge and left the teens and the cafeteria workers behind to eat their food in the dark.
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO
Dinning in the pitch black sucked because Maka didn't know where anything was. The blonde accidentally stabbed Soul with her fork each time she attempted to eat her salad and after confusing the albino's salmon for her chicken she gave up on dinner completely. With a sigh she turned in her chair to face her friend. If they were going to be stuck in a dark cafeteria with one another and not eat then they might as well talk.
"The demon told you about the lights?" Maka guessed.
"Yeah," he responded and although Maka couldn't see his facial expression when he said it she could hear in his voice that he wasn't proud.
"Doesn't it scare you?" she asked. "Being able to know these things?"
"No I've gotten used to it all. I told you that the other night remember?" Soul said.
"Yeah I remember. But still…it would scare me."
Just then the doors to the mess hall suddenly burst open and the team that had set out to find flashlights came flooding back into the room. "Hey guys good news!" said a voice that belonged to Dr. Stein. "I was looking around for some lights down in storage and I found a crate of glow sticks!"
"….why do we have those?" asked Nygus.
"Why not?" came his reply.
"Alright so I just talked to the staff on the other levels of the institution," Sid told everyone. "They're all good with flashlights so there's no need to worry about them."
"That's good," Marie nodded. "Okay so we have a total of 6 flashlights, 2 big lantern things and a crate of how many glow sticks…?"
"There's about a hundred," Stein said.
"And a crate of a hundred glow sticks," Marie finished her sentence.
"Oh and I found an old radio in one of the offices," Joe said, placing a bulky music system on one of the tables. "I just tested it out and it runs on battery and it picks up all the radio stations nearby."
"Okay so we have an odd assortment of lights and music…what do we do now?" Nygus asked.
BlackStar jumped up on one of the tabletops and yelled, "We have a kick-ass party!"
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO
Once every kid in the dining hall had been given at least 3 glow sticks Marie turned on the radio and blasted the music through the speakers. What everyone thought would be a disastrous night without power turned into something enjoyable, the rain pouring down outside long forgotten as the troubled teens took to the floor and began to dance.
Tsubaki and Maka tried to tango with one another (the enormous height difference between the two girls making it rather difficult) and Kid gave it his best shot at hip hop. BlackStar turned out to be an incredible break dancer; he was spinning and doing crazy flips all over the place. Liz and Patti moved like they were at a club, the elder Thompson sister unknowingly seducing a certain OCD boy as she pop locked and dropped. And Soul, well, Soul wasn't very involved. As soon as the party started he sat down at a table nearby claiming that events like these weren't really his thing. Only when a slower song came on he got up, walking over to Maka and asking if she wanted to dance.
Maka blushed at his request. "Like, a slow dance type thing?" she asked.
"Yeah," he said. "You want to?"
"I…I'll probably step on your feet," Maka said, looking down at her shoes. For some reason she was getting nervous, her heart had sped up and she felt dizzy.
Soul chuckled and took her hand. "My feet will be fine."
Maka felt her stomach drop as he led her out onto the floor. 'Calm down,' she scolded herself, 'it's just Soul.' But as he put his hands on her waist and began to move the two of them her pep talk was completely forgotten. Maybe she felt this way because she had never slow danced with a boy before. It was strange though because she wasn't in love with Soul or anything…so… why did she feel like this?
"Ouch," he suddenly said.
Maka quickly let go of the white haired boy and took a step back. Her fear had come true; she had crushed Soul's toes. "I'm really sorry," she apologized.
"Its fine," he assured her. "I can tell you're new to slow dancing."
"How do you know how to dance like this?" the pigtailed girl questioned.
"I grew up in the northern part of Death City; everyone there knows how to dance."
"Ooh so you're a rich kid huh," Maka mused.
"I come from a family of musicians," Soul told her, taking her hands again and resuming their dance.
"Is that why you and Wes both played instruments?" She asked as they swayed to the music.
"Yeah," he nodded.
"I wish I could hear you play the piano again," Maka said to him hopefully.
"You only heard me that day by chance," he said as he spun her.
"So you wouldn't play it again for me?"
"I don't play much anymore…not since the accident."
Maka nodded and let the subject drop, she knew her limits and this was where she had to stop. For the rest of the song they danced in silence, just letting their minds wander. Suddenly Maka's eyes widened in horror.
"Oh my god!" she exclaimed.
"What!?" Soul jumped at her sudden outburst
"I need to go to Crona," she panicked.
"Huh?"
"He's all alone and there are no lights and he's probably really scared. Come on, Soul, let's go get him," she said, taking off across the floor while holding Soul's hand.
"Wait a minute, Maka!" the albino shouted as she dragged him along. The pigtailed girl wouldn't listen to him though; she just kept on pushing through the crowd of glow stick clad teens until they reached the exit.
"Marie and the rest of the staff probably won't want leaving so we'll have to make this fast," Maka said. "We'll slip out, get Crona and come back before they even realize we're gone."
"Maka...I don't really think he's gonna want to come with us," the snowy haired boy said. "He'd probably be much happier by himself then with a big group like this."
"But you said you wanted to meet him," Maka tried to persuade him.
"Yeah but I don't think this is the best time."
"Please, Soul…I want to help him." The blonde gave him a pleading look with her bright green eyes.
The boy turned away from her puppy dog face and sighed. "Alright, let's go get him."
Maka grinned and opened the door of the mess hall. The two of them then slipped out of the chemiluminescencely* lit room and into the darkness.
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO
"It's really creepy not having any lights," Maka said to Soul as they journeyed to Corna's room. "I feel like someone's going to jump out any minute."
"Yeah, I know what you–" Soul smacked into a wall, "Goddamn it this is the 3rd fucking wall I've hit!"
The glow sticks weren't very strong; the field of view they allowed the teens to see was only a few steps ahead of them so they had to be careful where they ventured. After turning the corner they finally reached the corridor where the dorm rooms were. Slowly making their way down the hall they came to a stop in front of the plain white door with the scribble that read CRONA.
Maka gave a few knocks on the door. "Crona, it's Maka," she called. "We met yesterday remember?"
No answer.
She kept on knocking. "Crona, please come out."
A small voice came from behind the door. "I can't see anything it's too dark," Crona trembled.
"Okay calm down I'm coming in right now," Maka told him, turning the knob and entering the dorm.
Using the light of their glow sticks Maka and Soul discovered Crona curled up in a corner. The pinkette had been crying, tears stained his pale face and his eyes were bloodshot. Rushing over to him Maka pulled the boy into a tight hug, promising that things would be okay.
"The power went out," she told him. "But there are a lot of lights in the dining hall."
"Lights like these?" he asked as he timidly touched one of the glow sticks.
"Yeah, a bunch of glow sticks and flashlights, there's even a radio," Maka said with a smile. "You don't want to sit alone in the dark do you? You should come with us."
"Us?"
The pink haired boy suddenly noticed that Soul was in his room too. He stiffened in fear and cowered behind Maka. "W-who's that?" he stammered.
"Crona, this is my friend Soul," the blonde introduced the two boys to one another.
Soul gave the friendliest smile he could think of. "Um hey," he greeted.
Crona started to shake. "Maka, why are his teeth pointy? I don't know how to deal with pointy teeth!"
"It's okay," the blonde shushed him. "He may have scary teeth but he's a very nice person. So...will you come with us? We really want you to be there."
"Are there other people where the lights are?" he questioned.
Maka and Soul glanced at each other. "Well…yes," Maka answered.
Crona covered his face with his hands. "I'll just stay here then," he said.
"But it's dark here," she tried to change his mind. "I don't want you to be stuck in the dark."
"I don't know how to deal with other people," Crona sniffled. "I won't go."
Maka sighed and opened her mouth to say something else but Soul stopped her. "Come on, Maka, let's head back."
"But what about Crona?"
Soul handed the pinkette one of his glow sticks. "He can have this," he said. "But we should get going."
Maka tried to protest but before she could Soul took her hand and led her out of the room and back down the hall.
"Soul, let go of me! We can't just leave him, we have to keep trying," she pleaded, struggling to get away so that she could go back to Crona.
"He'll be fine, Maka."
"Fine?" she snorted. "He's not fine he's scared!"
"Seriously he'll be fine."
"And why's that? Because he has that one glow stick?"
"No."
"Then why?" she demanded to know.
Suddenly there was another loud humming and the Death City Mental Institution for Troubled Teens lit up like a Christmas tree.
He smirked. "That's why."
Author's Note: Hellooooooo everyone how were your holidays? My Christmas was especially fabulous, I got wigs and cosplay and fuzzy socks XD This chapter is my gift to all of you, we got some Soma stuff going on and ma baby (Crona) made a reappearance sooooo I'm crossing my fingers that you guys are happy with the 14th installment of Matching Scars. I must go now my lovely readers, I have A LOT of school work to finish :p I shall see you all for the next update! Goodbye! *fades away from the computer*
Chemiluminescencely* If anyone read this word and was like "ummm what?" I shall tell you here what it means. Okay, glow sticks give off a type of light called chemiluminscence, and there you have it! :D