Disclaimer: No I still don't own Dark Angel!
Notes: I know quite well that it took me forever to get this chapter out but I forbid you to think bad on me for it because I spent the whole time working on it. This chapter has been a pain in the ass. Hope it's at least moderately passable, considering all the effort I put into it.
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...The Unspoken...
...by Plastic Female Plaything...
...plasticteenprototype@earthlink.net...
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It was a strange sort of moment because it seemed to defy the very laws of time. It could have been a moment, a heart's beat that it lasted, or a thousand years, an eternity. There was haze of darkness so complete that it surrounded her like air, and yet somehow its omnipresence did not frighten her. Any sort of absolute darkness had an undesirable effect on her ever since the cell for understandable reasons, but there was a different feeling about this dark. Not a choking, smothering sensation as she was accustomed to. Perhaps it was because there was no feeling or even an awareness of her body, or maybe it was the absence of any sort of sound, but she felt such a comforting serenity that she was loath to ever let go of this place. No time or feeling or noise, just a peaceful drifting through infinity. No need to think or be aware or understand anything because simplicity was the very nature of everything.
And then there was an abrupt presence that was not comforting in the slightest. The dark was quickly fading as her self awareness grew. A horrible panic took hold of her as she could hear herself screaming.
In that flurry of light and her own voice screaming, she awoke.
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She was in pain. Oh, such terrible pain. This much was agonizingly apparent to her. Pain was familiar. This dingy age and neglect yellowed room with the hole in the wall opposite to her was not. It seemed almost the whole of her body was bound in white cloth, stained in places with old blood; her own she presumed. There was a window above the rusty metal cot she lay on, with the hard metal coils that stabbed her in the back, but the glass was to dirt speckled to do much more than let a pale, sickly light through onto her bandaged body. The walls held brownish stains in places, especially around the ceiling, and the wood floor gathered small, fluffy clumps of dust that sat huddled into corners. In one such corner their was a wooden chair with a faded fabric covering over the seat, and she also noted after inspection that there seemed to be a small table behind the head of her cot.
She lay there for a very long time. Motion brought fresh pain, so the simple solution was to not move. This allowed for a great deal of thought and introspection. She remembered very well what had happened. She remembered those faces full of cruel intent, the iron bar, the wooden X, the smell of gasoline, and the crowd whose voiced hate she did not understand. But what had transpired while her mind drifted alone and numb with oblivion?
Her breath caught with in her throat. She should be dead. How horrid this realization was. And yet she was not. She held up one of her own battered hands as if to further reassure this fact, watching in fascination as a small cut near the base of her thumb opened up from her movement and sluggishly leaked a small amount of blood. The concept of an existence after death was not something she was familiar with and even if she did believe in this idea, she would not suppose that this dirty little room was any sort of heaven or hell. Someone had saved that which was the most precious to her. Her life. And with this idea in her mind she let exhaustion drive her into the waiting arms of sleep.
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The sound of the door's rusty hinges creaking their way open was what woke her this second time. She was greatly interested; after all she had not yet seen another person and wished greatly for the knowledge they might impart upon her. It was a young girl-child with white blond hair and a plastic tray in her hands, much to Rin's disappointment. She had not known what to expect, but a child that could not be more than ten years of age was not what she wished. The child walked across the room, the small dust clusters fluttering (far to delicately for something as unbeautiful as a dust cluster) in her wake. She set the tray the rickety table. The pale haired child then dragged the chair from the corner over to her bedside and promptly sat upon it's faded fabric seat.
"Wha-" was al she managed to utter before she was interrupted by the child.
"Oh! You're awake! We'd thought you might be out for longer. I'm Nuri and I'll be changing your bandages for you."
Her head still felt such a pain that it was impossible for her to hear the fair one's mind-noise, she noted with a sort of frantic uncomfortable-ness. She had never before been with out this particular ability, no doubt given to her by the horrid White Coats in the earlier days of Manticore. This realization rendered her thoughts and voice silent while Nuri's small hands flew with a well known practice across her body. Answers, she suddenly decided. She wanted answers. Even if she had to batter the girl to get them. It was no longer a want. It was a need, and needs are a far more instant things that any mere flimsy little want.
"Why," she paused to reconsider her question for she herself knew not what to ask. "Where," she paused again, becoming frustrated with her inability to think properly. "What?"
Nuri interrupted her three times question without preamble. "When you came to us two days ago, we weren't quite certain you'd pull through."
"What happened to me? Why am I not dead?"
The unformed bluntness of her words and the power of the turbulent emotion she could not help but put behind them obviously took Nuri aback. And yet the fair haired girl-child found it within herself to muster a simplicity to her reply that was befitting of the question asked.
"You are not dead because Max saved you." The girl who called herself Rin for a sweet faced boy understood the with such an intensity the beauty of Nuri's statement. Oh, simplicity was wonderful. So many things great large things could be put into so few, short little words. Implication was a delightful aspect of this. She was not dead. What a horrendous difference life and death was. One was a whole world. A not so perfect world, but a world non the less, full of shape and color and texture. The other was nothing. An infinite nothing where you did not even possess the awareness to sorrow that the world, which we all at one time or another hold so close to us, was lost to you. Dirty bones under the earth in such a disgusting absence of flesh as to cause horror in who ever should find your morbid resting place. And yet, she was not dead. Why? Because some one called Max had saved her. Someone whom she did not know, ever even seen before had thrown back that which threatened her. Someone in this world that was both harsh and fragile at the same time had saved her very existence, had recognized the value of life in her. And it was such a value to Rin, but she had know no other since the kind days of the two males that had cared much one way or the other.
Nuri interrupted her thoughts with such a hesitancy that it could almost be argued that she guessed the importance thereof.
"You've got two broken ribs," she said and when she met no reaction from her prone patient she continued on. "Compound fractures in your," she gestured, "left arm. It's possible that regaining full mobility may take some time depending on the severity of the nerve damage. A bit head trauma. We can't really be sure if that will have any long term effects. We don't exactly have the equipment to handle properly diagnose or treat anything like that right now. The brain is a very dangerous aspect of the body to tamper with. Even with the T-cells in our blood it could still-"
"Our blood?" The question came from no where and she only realized it's existence as the awkward words burst forth from her. Her mind had become stuck on one single thought only a few words into Nuri's medically informative monologue and continued to remain steadfastly stuck upon it. How on earth did one so young as she know so very much? Nuri's facial features took on the sort of blankness that only the terribly confused possess. "You have no idea where you are, do you?"
This was truth if ever there was.
"No."
"Your're in terminal city."
Now it was Rin's turn to take on Nuri's blank look.
"Where?"
The question was a necessary one; more information was need than the name of a place she had heard time to time (but never really paid much attention to) in passing snatches of mind-noise while sitting listless on the dirty side walks of Seattle. Did this mean she had finally escaped the clutches of that city? She would bless the day she had. All that terrible noise drove her to such an infuriation in her that she frightened herself. But why? The endless questions that had suddenly sprung up from with in her fueled a sudden annoyance at Nuri's furtive glances at the door and abrupt silence in response to her. She wished helplessly for her mind hearing to return so that she might pry her answers from the child's very brain, and yet her wishes were met with no miraculous fulfillment. How pathetic she felt! Bound to a bed by pain and injury, unable to make a simple child (who knew far to much for any comfort) answer her questions. Disgust for both herself and Nuri combined with the weight of her unanswered queries and the pain from her injuries was what caused her voice to scream its frustration at Nuri. Fear was what caused the fair haired child to run; the slamming door's harsh sound echoing finality in her ears. Another tie severed, she thought with self loathing as she stared down at her half changed bandages and partially exposed wounds.
You have another who hates you now, her inner monologue dictated miserably. At least this time the reason is something entirely your fault.
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Two others came to finish tending her bandages soon after that but she found herself feigning sleep when they came, fearing that her anger would speak for her again. She knew what a palpable thing her anger was. Death followed her rages like a shadow so she forced it within herself as the two unknowns finished with her bandages and spoke softly about trivial, unimportant matters. To alienate every person in this unknown place was hardly a goal that she wished to attain.
Thought was her company that night when sleep escaped her. What did she know? She knew she had been attacked, oh yes, she knew this all to well. She knew that while her mind swam in sweet oblivion, some one called Max had saved her from the very embrace of death and had taken her to place called "terminal city". The simplicity she loved so well would simply not serve in this situation. How could she accept her surroundings if she knew near to nothing about them? How long could she lie prone in this room before she was healed? Would they keep her here by force, and more importantly who were these people who tended her? The word 'why' had never before seemed so large and important to her and now she found it filling her mind, growing and growing until she was certain that her head might burst open from this terrible impatience.
Resolve filled her and the next time someone entered her little room (this time to deliver a tray of various edibles) she opened her eyes and lifted her voice to address the rather tall male that bore the tray in question.
"I want to speak with Max."
The tall one seemed unaffected by her question and to her infinite frustration instead of words there was still only silence in her mind so she could not discern if this apathy was genuine.
"I'll see if I can find her for you. In the mean time, " the tray bearer said while carefully lifting the upper half of her body into a sort of half leaning, half sitting position (a rather painful experience given her injuries) and plopped the food tray onto her newly formed lap, "Eat this," he finished and quickly exited her room.
Hesitantly, she picked up the pronged object off the tray with the ridiculous name of "fork" and skewered a small portion of her unknown meal. Holding it up in front of her face for further contemplation, she carefully took a small bite. Hmm. And what a delight it was, she thought. Food had never quite been like this before.
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The shiningly golden concept of luck was with the girl called Rin on this matter for she had only just set aside her dishes from her thoroughly wonderful meal and was contemplating trying to arrange herself back into a comparatively more comfortable position when she head the keening squeak of her door's rusty hinges swinging to accommodate the pressure being place upon them. And all to suddenly there stood a girl, who looked to Rin the very picture of unintentional grace and hesitancy.
"You wanted to speak with me." A statement of the obvious, but what else was there for situations like these?
"Yes. I did. You see," she paused to sort her mind, and to cover her lengthy contemplation gestured at the chair, indicating (in what she had learned was a polite act) that sitting was approved of, "I don't know why or where I am."
"You're in terminal city. I brought you here."
"I understand this. Why?"
"Because it's safe here. Because," Rin noted Max's eyes sudden interest with her bandages, "It's not safe for us out there any more. We can take care of our own here."
"Our own?" The question was familiar.
"Yeah," Max tapped the two slender fingers to the back of her neck in such a startlingly familiar gesture that she understood it's meaning perfectly.
Oh. Well. That made sense.
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To be continued..
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Thanks be to my two reviewers for the last chapter. As always to Logan's Stalker (whom I absolutely adore and promise to finish the story for) and to Teddy who doubled my reviews. I mean, sure it was from 1 to 2 but still! The appreciation remains! You guys rock as usual.
Notes: I know quite well that it took me forever to get this chapter out but I forbid you to think bad on me for it because I spent the whole time working on it. This chapter has been a pain in the ass. Hope it's at least moderately passable, considering all the effort I put into it.
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...The Unspoken...
...by Plastic Female Plaything...
...plasticteenprototype@earthlink.net...
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It was a strange sort of moment because it seemed to defy the very laws of time. It could have been a moment, a heart's beat that it lasted, or a thousand years, an eternity. There was haze of darkness so complete that it surrounded her like air, and yet somehow its omnipresence did not frighten her. Any sort of absolute darkness had an undesirable effect on her ever since the cell for understandable reasons, but there was a different feeling about this dark. Not a choking, smothering sensation as she was accustomed to. Perhaps it was because there was no feeling or even an awareness of her body, or maybe it was the absence of any sort of sound, but she felt such a comforting serenity that she was loath to ever let go of this place. No time or feeling or noise, just a peaceful drifting through infinity. No need to think or be aware or understand anything because simplicity was the very nature of everything.
And then there was an abrupt presence that was not comforting in the slightest. The dark was quickly fading as her self awareness grew. A horrible panic took hold of her as she could hear herself screaming.
In that flurry of light and her own voice screaming, she awoke.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~- ~-~-~
She was in pain. Oh, such terrible pain. This much was agonizingly apparent to her. Pain was familiar. This dingy age and neglect yellowed room with the hole in the wall opposite to her was not. It seemed almost the whole of her body was bound in white cloth, stained in places with old blood; her own she presumed. There was a window above the rusty metal cot she lay on, with the hard metal coils that stabbed her in the back, but the glass was to dirt speckled to do much more than let a pale, sickly light through onto her bandaged body. The walls held brownish stains in places, especially around the ceiling, and the wood floor gathered small, fluffy clumps of dust that sat huddled into corners. In one such corner their was a wooden chair with a faded fabric covering over the seat, and she also noted after inspection that there seemed to be a small table behind the head of her cot.
She lay there for a very long time. Motion brought fresh pain, so the simple solution was to not move. This allowed for a great deal of thought and introspection. She remembered very well what had happened. She remembered those faces full of cruel intent, the iron bar, the wooden X, the smell of gasoline, and the crowd whose voiced hate she did not understand. But what had transpired while her mind drifted alone and numb with oblivion?
Her breath caught with in her throat. She should be dead. How horrid this realization was. And yet she was not. She held up one of her own battered hands as if to further reassure this fact, watching in fascination as a small cut near the base of her thumb opened up from her movement and sluggishly leaked a small amount of blood. The concept of an existence after death was not something she was familiar with and even if she did believe in this idea, she would not suppose that this dirty little room was any sort of heaven or hell. Someone had saved that which was the most precious to her. Her life. And with this idea in her mind she let exhaustion drive her into the waiting arms of sleep.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~- ~-~-~
The sound of the door's rusty hinges creaking their way open was what woke her this second time. She was greatly interested; after all she had not yet seen another person and wished greatly for the knowledge they might impart upon her. It was a young girl-child with white blond hair and a plastic tray in her hands, much to Rin's disappointment. She had not known what to expect, but a child that could not be more than ten years of age was not what she wished. The child walked across the room, the small dust clusters fluttering (far to delicately for something as unbeautiful as a dust cluster) in her wake. She set the tray the rickety table. The pale haired child then dragged the chair from the corner over to her bedside and promptly sat upon it's faded fabric seat.
"Wha-" was al she managed to utter before she was interrupted by the child.
"Oh! You're awake! We'd thought you might be out for longer. I'm Nuri and I'll be changing your bandages for you."
Her head still felt such a pain that it was impossible for her to hear the fair one's mind-noise, she noted with a sort of frantic uncomfortable-ness. She had never before been with out this particular ability, no doubt given to her by the horrid White Coats in the earlier days of Manticore. This realization rendered her thoughts and voice silent while Nuri's small hands flew with a well known practice across her body. Answers, she suddenly decided. She wanted answers. Even if she had to batter the girl to get them. It was no longer a want. It was a need, and needs are a far more instant things that any mere flimsy little want.
"Why," she paused to reconsider her question for she herself knew not what to ask. "Where," she paused again, becoming frustrated with her inability to think properly. "What?"
Nuri interrupted her three times question without preamble. "When you came to us two days ago, we weren't quite certain you'd pull through."
"What happened to me? Why am I not dead?"
The unformed bluntness of her words and the power of the turbulent emotion she could not help but put behind them obviously took Nuri aback. And yet the fair haired girl-child found it within herself to muster a simplicity to her reply that was befitting of the question asked.
"You are not dead because Max saved you." The girl who called herself Rin for a sweet faced boy understood the with such an intensity the beauty of Nuri's statement. Oh, simplicity was wonderful. So many things great large things could be put into so few, short little words. Implication was a delightful aspect of this. She was not dead. What a horrendous difference life and death was. One was a whole world. A not so perfect world, but a world non the less, full of shape and color and texture. The other was nothing. An infinite nothing where you did not even possess the awareness to sorrow that the world, which we all at one time or another hold so close to us, was lost to you. Dirty bones under the earth in such a disgusting absence of flesh as to cause horror in who ever should find your morbid resting place. And yet, she was not dead. Why? Because some one called Max had saved her. Someone whom she did not know, ever even seen before had thrown back that which threatened her. Someone in this world that was both harsh and fragile at the same time had saved her very existence, had recognized the value of life in her. And it was such a value to Rin, but she had know no other since the kind days of the two males that had cared much one way or the other.
Nuri interrupted her thoughts with such a hesitancy that it could almost be argued that she guessed the importance thereof.
"You've got two broken ribs," she said and when she met no reaction from her prone patient she continued on. "Compound fractures in your," she gestured, "left arm. It's possible that regaining full mobility may take some time depending on the severity of the nerve damage. A bit head trauma. We can't really be sure if that will have any long term effects. We don't exactly have the equipment to handle properly diagnose or treat anything like that right now. The brain is a very dangerous aspect of the body to tamper with. Even with the T-cells in our blood it could still-"
"Our blood?" The question came from no where and she only realized it's existence as the awkward words burst forth from her. Her mind had become stuck on one single thought only a few words into Nuri's medically informative monologue and continued to remain steadfastly stuck upon it. How on earth did one so young as she know so very much? Nuri's facial features took on the sort of blankness that only the terribly confused possess. "You have no idea where you are, do you?"
This was truth if ever there was.
"No."
"Your're in terminal city."
Now it was Rin's turn to take on Nuri's blank look.
"Where?"
The question was a necessary one; more information was need than the name of a place she had heard time to time (but never really paid much attention to) in passing snatches of mind-noise while sitting listless on the dirty side walks of Seattle. Did this mean she had finally escaped the clutches of that city? She would bless the day she had. All that terrible noise drove her to such an infuriation in her that she frightened herself. But why? The endless questions that had suddenly sprung up from with in her fueled a sudden annoyance at Nuri's furtive glances at the door and abrupt silence in response to her. She wished helplessly for her mind hearing to return so that she might pry her answers from the child's very brain, and yet her wishes were met with no miraculous fulfillment. How pathetic she felt! Bound to a bed by pain and injury, unable to make a simple child (who knew far to much for any comfort) answer her questions. Disgust for both herself and Nuri combined with the weight of her unanswered queries and the pain from her injuries was what caused her voice to scream its frustration at Nuri. Fear was what caused the fair haired child to run; the slamming door's harsh sound echoing finality in her ears. Another tie severed, she thought with self loathing as she stared down at her half changed bandages and partially exposed wounds.
You have another who hates you now, her inner monologue dictated miserably. At least this time the reason is something entirely your fault.
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Two others came to finish tending her bandages soon after that but she found herself feigning sleep when they came, fearing that her anger would speak for her again. She knew what a palpable thing her anger was. Death followed her rages like a shadow so she forced it within herself as the two unknowns finished with her bandages and spoke softly about trivial, unimportant matters. To alienate every person in this unknown place was hardly a goal that she wished to attain.
Thought was her company that night when sleep escaped her. What did she know? She knew she had been attacked, oh yes, she knew this all to well. She knew that while her mind swam in sweet oblivion, some one called Max had saved her from the very embrace of death and had taken her to place called "terminal city". The simplicity she loved so well would simply not serve in this situation. How could she accept her surroundings if she knew near to nothing about them? How long could she lie prone in this room before she was healed? Would they keep her here by force, and more importantly who were these people who tended her? The word 'why' had never before seemed so large and important to her and now she found it filling her mind, growing and growing until she was certain that her head might burst open from this terrible impatience.
Resolve filled her and the next time someone entered her little room (this time to deliver a tray of various edibles) she opened her eyes and lifted her voice to address the rather tall male that bore the tray in question.
"I want to speak with Max."
The tall one seemed unaffected by her question and to her infinite frustration instead of words there was still only silence in her mind so she could not discern if this apathy was genuine.
"I'll see if I can find her for you. In the mean time, " the tray bearer said while carefully lifting the upper half of her body into a sort of half leaning, half sitting position (a rather painful experience given her injuries) and plopped the food tray onto her newly formed lap, "Eat this," he finished and quickly exited her room.
Hesitantly, she picked up the pronged object off the tray with the ridiculous name of "fork" and skewered a small portion of her unknown meal. Holding it up in front of her face for further contemplation, she carefully took a small bite. Hmm. And what a delight it was, she thought. Food had never quite been like this before.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~- ~-~-~
The shiningly golden concept of luck was with the girl called Rin on this matter for she had only just set aside her dishes from her thoroughly wonderful meal and was contemplating trying to arrange herself back into a comparatively more comfortable position when she head the keening squeak of her door's rusty hinges swinging to accommodate the pressure being place upon them. And all to suddenly there stood a girl, who looked to Rin the very picture of unintentional grace and hesitancy.
"You wanted to speak with me." A statement of the obvious, but what else was there for situations like these?
"Yes. I did. You see," she paused to sort her mind, and to cover her lengthy contemplation gestured at the chair, indicating (in what she had learned was a polite act) that sitting was approved of, "I don't know why or where I am."
"You're in terminal city. I brought you here."
"I understand this. Why?"
"Because it's safe here. Because," Rin noted Max's eyes sudden interest with her bandages, "It's not safe for us out there any more. We can take care of our own here."
"Our own?" The question was familiar.
"Yeah," Max tapped the two slender fingers to the back of her neck in such a startlingly familiar gesture that she understood it's meaning perfectly.
Oh. Well. That made sense.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~- ~-~-~
To be continued..
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Thanks be to my two reviewers for the last chapter. As always to Logan's Stalker (whom I absolutely adore and promise to finish the story for) and to Teddy who doubled my reviews. I mean, sure it was from 1 to 2 but still! The appreciation remains! You guys rock as usual.