Waking up was agony. It felt like every cell in her body had been set aflame and like her head was seconds away from imploding. When she opened her eyes, everything seemed to spin dangerously and her stomach heaved as though she were about to throw up. Bile burned in the back of her throat, but nothing made it's way up. She moaned.
It was only then that she noticed the blurry face looming above her. She blinked, trying to focus, but everything was too far away. She wondered where her glasses had gone.
(But no, wait. That wasn't right. She didn't wear glasses. Even if she had needed them, there was no way her mama would be able to afford any. She was too young to be worried about such things.)
She tried again to focus, blinking rapidly, eyes darting even when she tried to keep them still. The person above her had dark hair and familiar features, lips dyed red beneath a small nose. Her dark eyes seemed to glisten.
"Mom? Mom, it hurts! What's going on? What happened?" she tried to say, but the words felt strange on her tongue. They came out slurred, mangled. She realized she wasn't sure what language she was speaking. That was...unusual, to say the least.
Then it hit her; Her mother was colorful and sturdy, not monochrome and waifish. How could she have gotten that wrong?
She tried to pull away, to raise a hand, to do anything at all, but she couldn't even manage to make a single finger twitch. The woman was crying, she realized.
"What happened?" she tried to ask again, fear churning in her gut. After all, one didn't wake up in pain like this with their mother (no, no, it's a stranger!) crying over them. "Was there an accident? Why does it hurt so much?" Again, the words came out mangled and unrecognizable.
She tried to recall what had happened before.
She had gotten off work, late, after midnight. She had been walking back home, passing by a gas station right off the main street. It was quiet and warm, a breeze tugging at her hair, and the smell of gasoline had hung heavy in the air. It had felt peaceful despite the late hour, and she had smiled at the woman who had been filling her car up as she passed. There was the glow of headlights as another car had driven by. She had been lost in thought, going over the finances for the month and wondering how much her next paycheck would be. She had heard the screech of brakes, then nothing.
But no, that wasn't right, was it?
The last thing she remembered was fear. The men had found them while they were playing in one of the training grounds. She had grabbed her sister's hand and they had run for it, knowing that as soon as they got home their grandmother would protect them. But the men were big, and they were fast, and they had fallen upon her and her sister and they had hit them and kicked them. Everything hurt, and the taste of blood had filled her mouth, and there were bones breaking through her skin. She had looked at her sister and seen her lying there, blood beneath her head and one of her eyes gone. Then someone had kicked her in the face, and she had heard her nose crunch, and then everything was gone.
She tried to tell the woman what had happened, both last memories mixing up and the story coming out as jumbled as her speech. She felt cool hands against her face, and her vision whirled as a new face came into view. This one was as pale as any ghost, made up of sharp angles and glowing eyes.
"Am I dead?"
There was no response.
He turned to the woman (mama?) and spoke. She couldn't make it out. His voice was rasping, yet somehow soothing. She didn't fight the urge to close her eyes and to let herself be carried away by sleep.
A moment that somehow also felt like a thousand years passed, and suddenly the world around her jolted. Eyes she hadn't even realized she'd closed flew open. She felt hands on her, gentle yet methodical and uncaring as they maneuvered her and then lifted her.
There were people dressed all in white, and she felt herself relax just a little. These people were medics-doctors. They would help and they would make the horrible, mind-numbing pain go away. If she could have, she would have cried from the sheer rush of relief she felt at the thought. Instead, she let herself drift as she was moved. It was so much easier, all of a sudden.
When she next opened her eyes, she found that it was easier to move. Her nerves still felt like they were all on fire, and it seemed like there was an immense pressure building up just under her skin. She shuddered, took a deep breath, and tried again to move.
Her fingers all moved, though not much more than twitches. She was able to wiggle her toes, shift her weight ever so slightly to roll her hips and lift her legs. Everything felt distant and disconnected from her, but at least she knew for sure that she wasn't paralyzed or something. Maybe just really drugged up?
She managed to shift her head, letting it loll to the side without much control. The action made the room spin around her and she found lazy curses rolling from her lips along with a pained groan. She blinked slowly, squinted, and when the world came into focus she found herself face-to-face with something that made her heart pound harder and her skull feel like it was being split in two.
Lying across from her, just within her short range of sight, was her sister.
Elle-Hiroko-Elle-Hiroko-sister-sister-her sister, her little sistersistersister!
Her sister.
She gasped, and the name didn't matter right now, because that was her baby sister lying across from her. She was different, years younger, features foreign, but it was undeniably Elle. Yet it was also somehow just like she remembered her twin from before the villagers had chased them. She was pale and asleep, but unhurt. Her heart seemed to swell, because Hiroko was okay!
A choking noise, somewhere between a laugh and a sob, filled the room. It took a second for the girl to realize that she was the one making it. She didn't bother trying to stop herself like she normally would, far too overwhelmed by emotion to worry about anyone seeing her cry. She wasn't really sure what had happened, or how they were here, but they were both alive!
In that moment, that was more than enough.
The world was running strangely around her. She wasn't sure how much time had passed when she opened her eyes again. This time, she wasn't in quite as much pain, which probably meant that whatever drugs she was on were probably working.
This time, there was someone standing over her. She was too exhausted to even feel surprised by it.
She squinted up at them, trying to make out features besides silver hair and pale skin. They were dressed in dark clothes, which...was that unusual for a doctor or nurse? She hadn't really spent a lot of time in hospitals before.
"Ah, I see that you're awake. How are you feeling?"
His voice was soft and kind. But there was something off, like an echo, or two voices overlayed over one another. She could understand him perfectly but there was a part of her mind that was insisting that she couldn't speak the same language he was. She swallowed a few times, trying to bring feeling back into her tongue before she spoke.
"I'm...I hurt. A lot. But it's feeling better."
Her voice was pitched higher than she was used to, higher than it had been since she'd hit puberty. She frowned and cleared her throat.
The smudge that was the man's mouth curved up into a smile. "Good, I'm very glad to hear that. Can you tell me your name?"
"I'm Kaguya Mayuri, sir. And my sister is named Hiroko," she answered, the names falling easily from her lips. As soon as she had said them, though, she had to pause and think, because no, her name was Avery and her sister was Elle. The man's gentle voice snapped her back to reality.
"That's very good, Mayuri-chan. Can you tell me how you feel right now?"
She considered his words, rolling her thoughts around in her head like glass marbles in a jar. She felt like her mind was strangely breakable, and the thoughts inside it would be what shattered her. She wasn't sure which voice inside her head would break first.
"I feel like everything is on fire. I'm dizzy and my head and everything else hurts, and it feels like there's something moving under my skin."
The words sounded strange to her. They rolled off her tongue easily, she had been speaking this language all her life, yet somehow they seemed to rebel within her own head like she was trying to listen in on a conversation in a foreign language.
The man made a sympathetic noise, then reached forward to grasp her wrist, fingers pressed gently against her pulse point. He frowned. A distant part of her marvelled at how large his hand was compared to her own, but she was mostly concerned with the fact that he was grabbing a part of her that she was fairly certain needed to be in a cast.
His hand moved to rest against her throat instead, his touch feather-light against her pulse. After a moment, he nodded and said, "Well, all of your vitals are checking out. You seem to be very healthy, all things considered." He flashed her a smile. "The pain should go away soon, so don't worry."
"How's my sister?"
"Oh, she seems to be doing fine. She hasn't woken up yet, but that's not really unusual."
Mayuri felt tears prick at her eyes as a smile stretched her cheeks and made her face burn from the movement. Her voice cracked when she whispered, "I'm glad she's alright."
"Yes, you were both very lucky," the man returned, smile still in place. Something about it felt off. Mayuri wondered if maybe they were dying after all, and he just didn't know how to tell her. "Now, I have a few question for you. Is that alright?" He waited until she had nodded her ascent before continuing. "Has your mother ever spoken of your father?"
That was not the question she had been expecting. She had figured he would ask about medical history, or who to contact for them. Besides that, their parents were still together, so of course she talked about him. It didn't make any sense to be asking that.
But maybe that wasn't right. Mayuri paused, brow crinkling as she tried to sift through memories. She had never met her father and had never really wanted to. She wasn't sure where she had gotten the thought that she had a father.
The idea of her mind conjuring up false memories scared and confused her. She swallowed a few times, trying to rid herself of the lump in her throat, and carefully considered. Her mother had spoken of the mystery man who had sired them a few times, hadn't she?
"Mama's proud of who he is," she began slowly, and the man shifted a little closer so he could hear her quiet voice. His blurred features came more into focus, and she was surprised to see how young he was. "He's somebody strong and she said that she had wanted him to give her strong sons but then he gave her strong daughters instead. Me and Hiroko!"
The man nodded, smile never faltering, and the dim lights reflected off his glasses. "Did she ever tell you what clan he was from, or what made him so strong?"
"She just said that my papa had a curse, just like my granny does, so he would be strong too." She frowned. "But I never met him so I think that my mama is probably a lot stronger than him, because why else would he want to hide from her?"
He quirked an eyebrow. "Hide? Why do you think he's hiding from her?"
"Well, why else would he not come back? She must have been angry at him so he ran away and hid." Here, she lowered her voice to a reverent whisper, as though afraid her mother would pop up any second. "My mama's very scary when she's angry."
"Ah, I see. Is there anything else your mother has said about him?"
"I think she said he liked snow one time, but I wasn't really listening," Mayuri admitted.
"That does sound confusing," he said in the tone of one humoring a child. Mayuri frowned, thoughts swimming again. She'd used that same tone many time before, hadn't she?
"I have one more question for you; have you or your sister ever shown any signs of having one of these...curses?"
Mayuri thought it over carefully, brow scrunching. Then, she shook her head, sending the room spinning once more.
This close, she could see the way the man's mouth curved and the glint in his eyes. Mayuri felt a shiver roll down her spine as his hand dropped to rest gently on the crown of her head, mussing her hair. "You did very good, Mayuri-chan. Thank you for being so helpful."
Mayuri nodded, a little stunned. Was that really all he wanted to know?
"Hey, mister medic? When will she come and see us?"
His smile remained firmly in place, but there was no warmth in his eyes as he said, "Your mother is very busy right now. You'll see her later."
"Oh. Why though? What's she doing?"
"Don't worry about it right now. You need your rest."
His hand suddenly felt pleasantly warm upon her brow, her headache dissipating under his touch. She nodded, eyelids suddenly heavy and her mind foggy with exhaustion. The man smiled as he turned to go.
He was almost to the door when Mayuri called out to him.
"You never told me your name."
He turned towards her again, and from that distance she couldn't tell what sort of an expression he wore as he said, "You can call me Kabuto."
And then he was gone. The room fell dark, and Mayuri gladly surrendered to the urge to sleep away the pain.
Alright, so I know that this is all sort of confusing and disjointed, but that's because I'm trying to get what's going on in Mayuri's mind across. Things are super messed up there for her. She's confused, and has multiple sets of memories and two minds dancing around up there. As such, things are sort of strange and all mixed up. She goes through periods where she's one or the other, but not yet both. So just bear with me while she sorts her shit out.
That said, thank you for reading! If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, just let me know!
