In spite of the last chapter, we're gonna be off the beach and back into the deep, depressing ocean that is "In Love and Hate" in this one. OH JOY! Sorry, but did y'all really think that I'd be able to keep it happy forever? Dear God…after reading all of the other chapters, I really hope not… He, he… Anywhozits…enjoy…
Disclaimer: I don't own it so you can't sue… And the "Pink ribbon scars…" quote is from the song "Today" by Smashing Pumpkins…
Blue and Yellow…
Ghostly fingers grazed lightly against pale as she sat in her large picture window, eyes closed and her arm pulled up to her chest, letting her fingers do the memorizing as they danced across her flesh. Images of perfectly straight pale pink lines began to form in her mind. First one and then two, slowly forming the designs of tally marks and harsh criticisms against the black of her thoughts.
She opened her mascaraed eyelashes with a heavy sigh and let her blue eyes slowly move down so they could stare at the designs.
"Pink ribbon scars that tried to forget," Aiko whispered, her voice barely even audible to her own ears. "I tried so hard to cleanse these regrets."
Tears tainted with black began to fall down her cheeks, splashing across her arm, her jeans, her shirt. No matter how hard she tried to forget her past, she'd never be able to let it go. Every time she closed her eyes for sleep, her mind was bombarded with memories. Her mother's scream, her father's shout. The smack, the bruise…the tears. Being told who her friends could and couldn't be, where she could and couldn't go, when she could go out and when she had to stay home. Her brother had never had the authority over her to make those decisions, but yet she had let him do it to her everyday.
She ran a finger gently against her largest scar. One cut for every time she had been forgotten. Two cuts for every time she'd seen him with her. Three cuts for every time she'd let her eyes drift to her reflection in the mirror… Ten cuts for every day she'd forced herself to live through her dreadful life. There was barely an inch of skin on her left arm that wasn't covered in scars.
She brought her hand up to her throat and rubbed it softly. Her neck still bore the marks of when she'd tried to hang herself with a cheap piece of string, and the cuts that had started near her breasts before unconsciously making their ways closer and closer to the pulsing artery in her throat. She had originally made the black ribbon choker necklace that she wore to cover the burn marks that the string had left before it snapped and sent her crashing to the ground. Shuichi was the only one that she'd trusted with the truth behind it.
Aiko sighed and rested the back of her head against the wall behind her, shrugging off the jacket that she'd only taken off in private for almost the past month. Shuichi was worried about the sudden reappearance of her jacket and, no matter how often she showed him her forearms to prove it, he didn't believe that she hadn't started cutting again. No, it hadn't been the cuts that had forced her to wear the damned jacket again. It had been something else.
Remi. A shiver rippled through her body as her boyfriend's name drifted through her thoughts. No, it hadn't been the cuts…it was Remi.
She should have known that the same thing that happened to her mother would end up happening to her as well. Hadn't it been scientifically proven that the daughter of a mother who was involved in an abusive relationship was bound to fall into one herself? She sighed.
Remi had seemed to be so kind when she'd first met him in the coffee house that she frequently attended with Eiri, Shuichi and the rest of Bad Luck. His brown eyes always sparkled when he smiled and his face still held that small amount of childishness that just made someone want to hug him. His voice was soft and gentle…so unlike his hands.
Her hands ran up and down her upper arms and she winced slightly at the pressure exerted upon her bruises. One of them slowly trekked up to her face and fingered the cut there deftly.
She could clearly remember the first time that Remi had hit her. They'd been fighting about some insignificant thing or another and Remi had gotten angry because he knew that the point that she was trying to argue was right and his wasn't. Before she'd even had time to prepare herself, his fist was crashed into her lower jaw. He'd apologized after he did it, of course he had, and that was what had made Aiko stay.
Aiko dropped her hand to her side and willed her body to relax, but it wouldn't listen. The numbness that she'd felt before her first suicide attempt was taking its time in overtaking her senses. She hated the numbness and the way that it had always started in her arms before slowly filling her soul. The tightening in her chest that made her want to scream was starting to make an appearance again as well. And she wanted to hurt herself so bad so she could get away from those feelings, but she'd promised Shuichi that she wouldn't. She was usually one to keep her promises unless her sanity relied upon it, as this one did.
She knew that she should tell Shuichi and Eiri about Remi's treatments and her slow descent back into the darkness, but she was too afraid of what they might say. She was afraid to leave Remi because of what he did and she was afraid of admitting her feelings because she was afraid of being put into the hospital again.
The three months that she'd spent in the mental hospital were something that she never wanted to experience again. They'd taken everything away from her and left her to rot. Shuichi was the one who had taught her to feel again, the one who had taught her to love after she had forgotten.
Tears began to well in her eyes and she rested her head in her hands, her fingers pulling mercilessly at her copper-colored hair. Everything was supposed to get so much better once she'd moved in with Eiri and Shuichi, and while she couldn't deny that it had, it had started to go downhill so fast. Her acceptance into Bad Luck was the one thing that had saved her life only a year before, but it didn't seem like anything would be able to save her this time.
"Why me?" she choked through her sobs. "God, why me? What did I ever do to deserve this?"
The sobs overtook her body and she fell from her perch on the large window sill to her floor. She lay curled in the fetal position, incoherent words that were supposed to calm her slipping silently through her lips.
Although her sobs didn't calm, Aiko opened her eyes and settled them on the black manicure set inverted into a safe haven for her blades, antiseptic cream, and bandages. She took a deep breath and grasped the small rectangular case in her hand, hugging it tightly to her chest. With shaking hands, she unzipped the set and tipped it upside down. Four miniature razor blades, a couple of tissues, and a tube of antiseptic fell to the floor.
She reached out and took one of the blades in her hand, shifting it back and forth as she lost herself in the metallic glare of light. With a sigh, she held her arm out before her and placed the edge of the blade near the inside of her elbow. In one swift, unwavering motion she dragged the razor across her skin and watched as the thin line of blood began to bubble up at the opening of the wound before exploding into crimson rivers. She felt the release steal over her senses almost immediately; the weight was lifted from her chest and her sobs slowed until they were just tears, but there was still something there.
After two more quick swipes across her arm with her blade, she wiped the blood away with a tissue but didn't bother to doctor it. She didn't know why she ever had the antiseptic cream since she'd never really used it. The only time she'd used it consistently was when she'd accidentally cut a thick piece of skin from the tip of her thumb while breaking open a razor, and that had been over five years ago.
Someone knocked on her door, and Aiko jumped.
"H-hold on!" she yelled and quickly threw the manicure set back into its hiding spot before pulling her jacket over her shoulders.
She jumped up from the floor and wiped the tears from her cheeks with a thumb. She knew that her eyes were probably bloodshot but she really didn't care. Aiko moved across her room as if she were a marionette, her limbs moving like they were attached thick pieces of string. Before she opened her door, she took one last swipe at her face with her thumb, and after a heavy sigh, she pulled it open.
It was Shuichi. When she moved away from the doorway, he followed her into he bedroom and closed the door behind him.
"What are you doing, Aiko?" It wasn't a nice question, it was a conviction.
She grabbed onto whatever strings of her sanity she had left and put up her best fake smile. "What do you mean, Shu-chan?"
He scowled at her and she winced beneath the intensity of it. "You know what I mean, Aiko. You never leave your room unless you're going to the studio or to see Remi anymore. I'm starting to get worried."
Aiko shrugged and took a seat on her bed, crossing her arms over her chest in a defensive gesture, but she refused to answer him. She heard Shuichi sigh from across the room and closed her eyes so she wouldn't have to see the angry disappointment on his face. She heard his footsteps as he crossed the room and felt the bed sink as he took a seat next to her.
"I want to know what's going on with you, Aiko," he whispered and an arm was draped across her shoulders. "Is it so wrong for me to be worried about my little sister?"
Aiko sighed and pulled herself out of Shuichi's embrace. She stood from her seat on her bed and crossed her room until she was standing in front of her window again, her eyes gazing longingly at the free grove of trees just beyond the property line.
"Aiko," Shuichi whispered, "will you please take your jacket off?"
Aiko's eyes grew to the size of platters and her shoulders tensed, two things that she knew wouldn't go unnoticed by Shuichi's keen eyes.
"Please," he whispered.
She shook her head and Shuichi sighed.
"If you do this for me, I'll quit pestering you, okay? I just want to…make sure that you're not hiding anything from me that you shouldn't be."
She shook her head again, her hair flying around her face like wings of copper. "I-I can't, Shu," she whispered. "You just don't understand what will happen if I tell you."
Shuichi was up from her bed and at her side in a matter of seconds. She could hear the almost silent growls that always signaled his anger and that he was on the borderline of a personality turnabout. Aiko couldn't stop the tears from falling down her face as she kept her eyes locked on the horizon, refusing to look at Shuichi for the fear of what she would see in his eyes.
"Look at me, Aiko!" he snarled.
She shook her head again and braced herself for what was to come—the loud crack and the pain that would leave her blinded by white lights—but it never came. Instead, Shuichi wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him. The sobs that overtook her body before she could tell her mind to make them do otherwise left her a broken mess in Shuichi's arms, and she buried her face in his chest.
"I'm…so…scared, Shu…ichi," she sobbed. "I…just dunno…what…to do."
"Shh…" Shuichi whispered words in her ear to calm her down and ran one hand gently up and down her back, the other through her hair in long, even strokes.
When the sobs finally calmed to a reasonable level, Aiko pulled away from Shuichi and turned her back on him, burying her face in her hands. A battle over what to tell Shuichi and what she should leave to herself waged in her mind.
'You know that Remi will hurt him if he ever finds out that you told someone.'
She knew that what her mind told her ways right, but she couldn't ignore the fact that he couldn't bare all of her burdens on her own anymore. That was what had caused her to attempt her suicide in the first place all those years ago, and she didn't want to be reduced to that "thing" that she had been again.
"Remi…," she started. "He hits me whenever I do something wrong." The words were almost silent, but she knew that Shuichi could hear everything that she said. "If I tell him to stop, he just gets worse." She pulled her jacket from her shoulders and let it drop to the ground. "If he finds out that I cut or something, he gets angry and beats me." She turned to face Shuichi and let her bruises finally be exposed.
Shuichi gasped and a hand went up to cover his mouth. His other hand moved up to her arm and its fingers ran lightly over the black and blue marks that covered her flesh. With a sad and self-depreciating smile, Aiko moved her fingers to her face, where they danced over the cut on her left cheek.
"It's the worst when he knows that my side of the argument is right and his isn't," she muttered. "He gets really angry then."
She ignored the tears that were falling from her eyes and scorned herself for the tears that had begun to well in Shuichi's.
"How long?" Shuichi managed to choke through his tears. "How long have you been keeping this from Eiri and me?"
Aiko shrugged. "I don't know. About a month now."
His jaw dropped and his hands fell slack at his side. "You're barely been with him for a month," he whispered.
She hung her head. "I know."
Shuichi sighed and he wrapped his arms around her waist, resting his chin on her shoulder. "You know that I love you, right?" he whispered into her ear. She nodded. "And you know that I'd give my life for you, right?" She nodded again and shivered at the cool gust of his breath against the back of her neck as he chuckled quietly.
He grabbed onto her shoulders and turned her around so she was facing him. She kept her gaze locked to the ground, but he put a hand beneath her chin and forced her face up. She refused to let herself look him in the eye, though. Shuichi sighed again.
"I love you, Aiko," he whispered and planted a soft kiss on the cut on her cheek before leaving her alone in her room.
It wasn't until she heard the door close and Shuichi's footsteps slowly made their ways down the staircase that Aiko fell to her knees and broke down into tears. She pulled madly at her hair and squeezed her eyes closed, trying to force her memories from her mind as well as trying to force herself from her body. She lifted her head and stared at her broken reflection in the mirror, a smile on her face despite the fount of tears that seemed never-ending.
"You're such a fuck up and a liar, Aimee," she growled. "Did you honestly think that you'd change your past just by changing your name and hair color?" She stared at her reflection coldly. "Coward."
She grabbed onto her window sill to help her get to her wobbling feet and used different objects in her room as leverage until she was standing in front of her mirror. She twined a lock of her red hair around a finger innocently, remembering the days when it had been a dirty blonde, before she lashed out at her reflection.
Her soul shattered into hundreds of thousands of little pieces, falling to the floor in a shower of glass. The pieces that wedged their way into her fist chewed madly at her nerves. She relished in the pain and wanted more of it.
'Make yourself suffer like you've made everyone else suffer, you lying bitch! You should have died four years ago. You were the witness. You watched as your life source drained from your body, too much blood for you to have lived. But you did, and it was all because of him. And what did you do to thank him?…'
"I ran away," she whispered, the unhindered truths that spouted from her mind boring holes through the composure she'd never had in the first place.
The largest shard of glass on the floor gleamed out of the corner of her eye. She stared down at it in a daze, a mild wince crossing her face as her reflection sneered up at her with a violent gleam in her eye.
'Kill her. She's not who you are now, so why suffer with her? Kill her and force her to be gone away from you and your family.'
Aiko sighed and sat in her desk's chair. Slowly, she pulled a piece of loose-leaf paper from the folder on the desk's top and grabbed a pen from the drawer. The pen connected with paper in a furious scribble as Aiko apologized to Shuichi and Eiri for all that she was about to do. She explained everything that had happened to her in the past, everything that had happened to her with Remi…everything that had driven her to be the wreck of a person that she was.
When the letter was finished, Aiko slowly folded in half, wrote Shuichi and Eiri's names on the front, and tore a piece of tape from the dispenser. She stood from her seat and strode across her bedroom. She pulled open the door and, with shaking hands, taped the letter to the faux wood surface. She closed the door, praying that Shuichi would stall and read the letter before opening the door and finding her cold, pale body.
Aiko closed her door and returned to the shattered mirror. The largest shard of glass still held the reflection of her inner demon, the girl she'd tried and failed to abandon all those years ago. Aiko fell to her knees and gripped the shard in her hand. Her reflection sneered at her, almost as if it were daring her to do what her mind was telling her to do.
"You don't have the balls," it was saying. "You don't have the balls to get away from me."
She squeezed her eyes closed and pressed the sharp edge of the glass against her wrist. She could feel the blood pulsing through the vein, begging to be shed, begging to be free from the demon that tainted it. With a little pressure, she dragged the glass across her wrist, jerking only slightly at the pain, and cracked open an eye to see that her heart was doing its job. The blood was pumping from the gash like a waterfall.
With her eyes opened this time, she cut her right wrist and watched the blood flow away.
Her body quickly became faint, her vision growing grey around the edges as she allowed herself to fall sideways onto the floor. She watched as her blood soaked into the carpet, staining the dull tan a vibrant crimson. But something didn't feel right. Her life was dangling by barely a string, yet she felt as if she was going to be saved.
Aiko let her eyes drift closed and a heavy sigh escaped from her lips. Even though she was ready to give her amazing second chance at life up to get away from her past, Aimee wouldn't allow it. She could feel her old self fighting for all she was worth, her hands in a death grip around the strings of her sanity.
The welcoming arms of unconsciousness drew Aiko into their embrace. Somewhere in the distance she heard footsteps, but she was too far gone to care.
-------------
Something wasn't right. It was only a given that he was worried about Aiko after getting the information out of her that he had, but his mind wouldn't stop circling around the woman. She had seemed so broken, so lost…so ashamed of everything that she had come to symbolize. She said that she knew that Shuichi loved her, but did she really?
Shuichi closed his eyes and rested his forehead in his hands. Something definitely wasn't right. If only Eiri were there so he would have someone to talk to and let his worries out.
'You idiot, the only way for you to calm down is go check on her and prove to yourself that she's fine.'
"But I told her that I'd leave her alone," he whispered.
'What if this is your sixth sense kicking in?'
Shuichi sighed and opened his eyes. While he doubted that he had sixth sense, he knew that his head was right. The only way to settle his thoughts would be to make sure that she was as fine as he hoped she was.
He left the living room and began his trek up the stairway, each step creaking quietly beneath his feet. The house was quiet…to quiet. A sudden wave of urgency overtook Shuichi's sense and he broke into a run. He had to keep a hand on the railing to keep himself from flying into the wall as he rounded the corner on the second story landing and began his ascent up the second flight of stairs.
Dread swelled in the pit of his stomach when his feet mounted the last step of the stairway. It had been silent on the first story, but it was even worse up here. He knew that Aiko would turn her Beethoven CD on as a calming mechanism whenever she was upset, but there wasn't the slightest hint of "Moonlight Sonata Op. 27 No. 2" echoing in the corridor.
Shuichi swallowed the lump in his throat and began his trek toward her room. The hallway seemed to grow with every step that he took, lengthening and stretching so far away from him that it seemed that reaching the door to Aiko's room would be impossible. And the fact that it felt as if his feet were sinking into quick-drying cement didn't help matters any better. Each foot felt like it weighed a hundred pounds, and he felt like Igor as he dragged them down the hallway beneath him.
The sense of panic that had filled his body, heart, and soul when he'd first set foot on the third story grew ten-fold for no reason whatsoever. Aiko's room was finally beginning to grow closer with each step taken.
'Please be okay, Aiko. Please. Prove to me that my mind is just playing games with me.'
Before he knew it, Shuichi was finally standing in front of the barrier that separated himself from Aiko, and although he knew he should open the door, his hand gravitated to the piece of paper that was taped to the door's surface.
His name was scrawled across the folded paper in Aiko's undeniable chicken scratch handwriting. His hands shaking, Shuichi unfolded the paper and stared at the long letter. It was written in English, something that he never knew that Aiko knew. After reading the first line of the letter, he knew that he was going to be learning a lot of new things about his "little sister".
Dear Shuichi and Eiri…
There are a lot of things that I never told you, things that I have to tell you before it's too late. I know that I'm taking the coward's way out in more than one way tonight, but I would never be able to tell you these things to your face because I'm too ashamed. If there was ever a day when I could look you in the eye and tell you the story of my life, I would do it myself, but unfortunately, I don't have the time to wait for that day…
I have lied to you for the past two and a half years. My name is not Aiko Kamiya. That is an alias that I created when I ran from the hospital the first time. I'm really Aimee Selden. I dyed my hair burgundy from it's normal dirty blonde color and changed my name to get away from the sad, pitiful little girl that I was before my first suicide attempt…
I know that I told you that I was adopted by a kind Japanese family. Well…that was lie, as well. I was born in America…New York. Not New York City, but a small town about three hundred miles away from there. It was little town known as Pulaski. Coincidentally, this town is only an hour away from where Ryuichi once lived, but that's not what matters…
What matters is that my father beat my mother. It started when I was nine years old. Six months after he began taking his anger out on her, he chose to hurt me as well. Six years later, my mom surprised me with an envelope full of money and told me to run away. I didn't want to go without her, but she refused to leave. So I left…
I was almost fifteen years old when I first arrived here. I had no family, no friends. I was able to afford an apartment and live on my own. I registered for school and started in the middle of the school year. It was different and I knew barely enough Japanese to get around. The only reason I survived was because of a boy named Takeru Kamiya. He helped me, taught me his language, and became my best friend. After year of friendship we began dating and after another six months, I moved in with him. Everything should have been perfect, but I couldn't forget everything that my dad did to me and my mom with I lived in America…
I remember the date like it was yesterday. March 12th. Takeru's parents had gone to Kyoto to visit family and Takeru had gone to the grocery store. Memories haunted my mind all day…the sound of my father's scream refused to leave my head. Only minutes after Takeru had left, I wandered into the kitchen and cut my wrists with one of the knives from the butcher's block…
I woke up in a hospital the next day and screamed like I had never screamed before. It was a scream of anguish, despair, anger… Before I knew what was happening, I was enveloped in someone's arms. It was Takeru. As luck would have it, he'd forgotten the grocery list and had returned home after I had lost consciousness. He called 911 and saved the life of someone who had desperately wanted to die. That night when he left, I ran. I was connected only to an IV. I tore the needle out of the top of my hand and crawled out my window. I was on the second story. I know that I could have jumped if I'd wanted to, but I was too afraid of heights. Instead, I climbed down using the bricks as leverage and ran when I reached the ground…
I don't know how far I made it, but I came to in Wellstone. I asked the doctors what had happened and they said that someone had found me unconscious on the street. When they saw my bandaged wrists, they took me there…
I was there for three months before you got there, Shuichi…
I can't deny that the past few years have been great, but there have been other things that I haven't told you. Remi isn't the person that I made him out to be. While he was kind at first, he changed. Just like home, I was abused again. I'm sorry that I never told you about him before, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I didn't want you to worry about me…
But now you won't have to do that anymore because I'm going to go to a place where no one can hurt me. I'll be free. Please, if you could, call the number I have written at the bottom of the page. You will reach Takeru with it. Yes, I have been talking to him so he won't be mad that you're calling about the person who abandoned him almost three years ago. He's the only one I've told about Remi. I want him to know that I love him with all of my heart and that I thank him for everything he offered Aimee in the past and Aiko this past year…
Well…I guess that's it. I want you both to know that I'm sorry for everything that I've put you through. I can't even tell you guys how much I love you and how thankful I am that you are my friends…my family. You both gave me love and support and changed me, but it wasn't enough to make me forget. I'm sorry…
I love you both…thank you for everything…
Aimee
(417-2644)…Please call him for me…
The letter drifted to the ground as it fell from Shuichi's shaking hands. The words burned through his heart and rang in his mind. Aiko wasn't Aiko, she was…Aimee? But why had she hidden it from him? From them? She should have known that they wouldn't think any less of her for her past. They had been through too much together for something like that to get between them. Tears filled his eyes and he picked the letter up from the floor. He couldn't bring himself to read it again; he just shoved it into his pocket.
Shuichi rapped lightly on the door with a knuckle, but there was no answer. He got the same response after another knock. With a heavy, shaking sigh, Shuichi closed his eyes and rested his hand on the door's handle. An electric shockwave seemed to tingle up his arm from the contact with the metal, but he refused to turn and run away. Aiko needed his help.
He applied a little pressure to the handle and the door slowly squeaked open. Even when he knew that the door was standing completely open, though, Shuichi couldn't bring himself to open his eyes. He was too overcome by fear of what he would see to take the chance.
'If she was alright, she would've said something when you knocked. But she didn't. And now you're standing in the open doorway to her room and she still hasn't said anything. She had a damn letter taped to her door. She's dying, Shuichi! Open your eyes and see if she's okay, you coward!'
The scent of blood overwhelmed Shuichi like a tsunami. Memories that he'd tried so hard to forget were brought forth in the tidal wave.
…He was lying on the kitchen floor, blood pouring from the two wounds carved deep into his wrists and the word MASOCHIST was spelled down his left arm. Eiri was pounding on his front door, shouting his name as if he thought he would answer. He was drowning in a sea that smelled strongly of copper and there was no way for him to resurface…
Shuichi squeezed his eyes against the memories and forced himself to take a few stabilizing breaths. That was all in the past and it wouldn't happen again. He refused to let himself be reduced to that again.
With his mind set, Shuichi begrudgingly opened his eyes and time seemed to stand still. A hand immediately shot up to his mouth to keep him from vomiting at what he saw. Aiko was sprawled across her bedroom floor, her hair a coppery halo around her head, and a constant flow of blood poured from both of her wrists, seeping into the carpet.
"AIKO!"
He ran into the room, but just like her door, Aiko's body seemed to grow father away with every stride he took. Her face was pale, so pale; too pale for her to be alive, but he refused to give up hope. He refused to turn his back on his best friend when she was dying.
Then again, like he had at Aiko's door, Shuichi found himself on his knees at Aiko's side, lifting her into his arms as he frantically checked for a pulse. It was still there. Light, faint, and fading, but still there.
He was fighting a losing battle against his eyes. The harder he tried to keep them open, the harder they tried to close. Shuichi forced them to dart madly around the room for something to stem the blood flow and work as a makeshift tourniquet until he could call the paramedics. The only suitable things that he found were T-shirts. He grabbed four of them and wrapped one around each wrist, the others tight around the inside of each elbow to slow the flow of blood from her body.
His shaking hands fumbled with his cell phone in his pocket until they had it out on the free air. He hit the three buttons for the dispatcher so hard that he was surprised the phone didn't fall apart from the force. When the dispatcher finally answered the phone, Shuichi tried his hardest to calm his emotions, finally taking the time to realize that he was crying.
He told the calm woman what had happened and thanked her profusely when she said that the ambulance and crew were on their way. He let his phone drop to the floor when she hung up.
Shuichi gathered Aiko into his arms and cradled her head against his chest.
'She can't die. She just can't. I don't know what I'll do if she dies. Is this what Eiri felt whenever he found me? Did he feel this helpless? This lost? This broken?' He used a thumb to wipe the tears from his face. 'Why, Aiko?'
Then something in his mind clicked.
"Remi." The name slipped past his lips like an icy river.
'I'll kill that bastard.'
Shuichi gazed down upon Aiko, her face blurred by his tears, and ran a thumb gently up and down one of her cheeks. She looked so peaceful as she lay there, almost as if she'd been able to escape from those memories that had haunted her for years. Did people always look like this after attempting suicide? He shook his head. It was not the time to be thinking things like that.
The ambulance arrived within ten minutes, but it felt like it had taken ten years. Shuichi could do nothing but watch as the paramedics checked Aiko's pulse and hastily connected her to oxygen. They lifted her onto the gurney and carted her down the stairs and into he patiently awaiting ambulance.
He knew that he should stay and wait for Eiri to get home, but Shuichi couldn't refuse when he was given the invitation to accompany Aiko to the hospital. The screaming sirens blared, echoing through the hills and Shuichi's clouded mind, and the ambulance pulled out of the driveway at full speed.
Somewhere between the house and the hospital, Shuichi called Eiri and told him about what had happened. The blonde was frantic and asked Shuichi six times which hospital they were taking Aiko to before he got off the phone and agreed to meet them there.
While they awaited news on Aiko's blood transfusion, Shuichi let Eiri read the letter she had written them. Eiri had the same response to the letter as Shuichi had and immediately began asking questions the raven-haired man couldn't answer. The two fell into tears and were left to try and comprehend the letter on their own.
Some time after that, a doctor came out to talk to them about Aiko's condition. They could tell from the expression on his face that things weren't going as they had hoped.
"She's lost a lot of blood," he said.
Shuichi sighed and frowned, voicing the question that had been on his mind since finding her. "Is she going to be okay? Will she live?"
"We can't determine that yet," the doctor sighed. "Worst case scenario is if her heart gives out before the transfusion is completed. Best scenario is that it doesn't and she goes on. But even if it doesn't give, that still doesn't mean she'll pull through." He sighed again. "She'll still be in critical condition and there will be a fifty-fifty chance of her surviving or passing."
Shuichi nodded and slumped down into the uncomfortable plastic chair he sat in.
"How long will it be until we know for sure?" Eiri muttered.
The doctor shrugged. "I can't answer that."
"Can't answer it? What do you mean you can't answer it? You're the doctor! You're the one who's supposed to know if the person you're caring for is going to live or if they're going to die," he yelled, his voice laced with tears. "If you don't know, then who does?"
"Only God knows, Mister Uesugi," the doctor said with a bow and left them in silence.
The rest of the night was a blur of extreme sadness and a non-stop flow of tears. The doctor had returned to the waiting room half and hour after he'd first visited them and gave them the news that there still wasn't any definite news on Aiko's condition. He told Eiri that he should take Shuichi home, and that if anything changed in her progress, the hospital would call them immediately.
Eiri nodded and pulled the struggling, shouting Shuichi out to the car and loaded him into it. When they got to the house, he carried Shuichi inside and up to their bedroom. He calmly and carefully changed him into his pajamas and laid him out on their bed. Even though they knew that neither of them would get any sleep, it was comforting to know that they weren't alone at the moment; that someone was suffering as much as they were, maybe even more.
The night of March fifth was cold and a storm brewed in the deep, midnight sky above as Aimee Selden took her final breath.
TBC…
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A/N: Dun, dun, dun… Sorry for those of you who liked Aiko! I didn't want to kill her, honest! I mean, that was like killing me since she's supposed to be me…sighs… Anyway, because she left me hangin' halfway through this bastard, I'm gonna hand the rest of this note over to Waverly…smiles innocently at her muse and skips off to watch Loveless…
Waverly: glares the back of Kolie's head and wishes she had some rocks to throw at her…I hate it when she leaves me with these stupid jobs. Ugh! I could kill her…schemes…
Anyway…I guess that I should explain some things for Kolie before you go and start thinking she's a freak or something like that. Well, you probably already think that she's a freak, but that doesn't matter…
Okay…first. Not that many of you probably remember that I said that Aiko was Kolie, but for those of you who do… One…she doesn't have a boyfriend (or girlfriend) so isn't involved in an abusive relationship. And, while part of the letter came from her own past, she was never abused by her father…
Two…for the first time in two years, she's not suicidal at this point and time. Okay, lemme rephrase that… She hasn't been suicidal non-stop for the past two years; it just always seems to be this time of the year (mainly Feb. and March). Even though her parents have split, she hasn't cut or hurt herself in any other way for a month now and she's very proud of that. And, as much as I hate her, I am too… I don't think I have anything else to clarify for her, though…
Anywho…thank you sooo much to all of you who reviewed and your patience in waiting for Kolie to have the rest of this bastard re-uploaded so we could continue. You all are amazing and we don't deserve you… We love you guys so much…
Alright…before I leave I want to apologize for any typos and stuff that Kolie did wrong in this chapter. Please don't hurt her…or me! Just kidding. You can hurt her if you want to…throws and even at an oblivious Kolie…sighs… Please do. It'll save me the job of having to hide her body…
Anyway…Ja matta! And see y'all in grand ole' chapter 26, getting ever closer to the end of the world that Kolie's rather disturbed mind created… With help from Maki Murakami-sama, of course…
gets distracted by all the pretty bishies and big-boobed Yuiko's on the TV screen… Ritsuka's sooo cute! Soubi's just creepy…