Hey, guys! It looks like I'm finally back! It's been a rough semester so far, but it's all turned out for the best. Now that I have university life all figured out, I can finally get back to some serious writing. Hopefully my updates in the future will happen a lot more often. On a different note, the song in this chapter is "Lost Child" from the .hack//SIGN OST 1 (very good CD!!!) –Lady PhoenixDagger *//.^*

*****

Strong. Right. I need to be strong. Tama Broman repeated the mantra to herself as she walked the halls to the Keep medical wing, the sound of her parents' cries of grief running tragic circles through her head. Strength will get you through. Strength will get everyone through. I can do this. I can do this. I can just walk up there and go in and smile and act like everything is perfectly okay and everyone is perfectly happy.

A small sob breached her throat as she entered the all-too familiar corridor of the med wing.

No. No, I can't.

The children were home, lying in different rooms in the wing, scared, broken and unresponsive. Despite the fact she was only two years senior to them, Tama could not help but see them now as helpless babies unable to care for themselves, thrust down into complete dependence by those who had no right to do so. They had come to the wing about a week ago, rushed in through the strange tear in space Walker had produced. It was only now that certain visitors could see the children –again that horribly fitting epithet- but the damage was so great many could not bear to see it for themselves, despite their desperate wants to see them. This left the rounds only to the goodly souls with hearts of iron.

This meant Tama, who, at the moment, felt more wretched than goodly as she stepped into the first room on her route. She had promised to look in on the children for the rest of Gil's little family as well as her own, their grief being too great to allow them to go in by themselves. She paused at the door, remembering the horror on her parents' faces as one by one the pilots were brought back and the anguish in their screaming voices as Misty was finally found.

The red-haired woman cleared her throat. As she had expected, there was no response. Heero and Wufei merely lay there in their beds, completely unmoving. They had been like this since they came home eight days ago. When he first checked them over, Dulcet had merely shaken his head and said to let them be. They were trying to hide, he said. The words still thudded like lead shot into Tama's brain. When Black Hood has you, your psyche has no choice but to spend all its time trying to hide and eventually your mind begins to think you can't be seen if it makes itself small. So it becomes smaller and smaller as it draws further and further into itself. And the abuse keeps coming, but you still hang onto that part of your mind that's now a tiny granule of its former self. You still hang onto the notion that you can keep yourself from being abused more by pretending you're not there, he said. Your mind's already screwed to shit from drugs and fear, so what's to say you can't just let yourself disappear? There was no choice but to wait until they boys were comfortable enough to be "found" again. But until then, they had to be left alone with the immovable belief that no one could see them.

There Heero and Wufei were in their room, lying there in grim stupor among a small timberland of flowers and plants sent by well-wishers, unmoving, unblinking, trying like hell not to exist. She went to them, laying a gentle hand on Heero's sunken cheek, trying not to openly notice the tiny flinch -no more than a tautening of the skin, really- that greeted her touch. Still they lay there like the dead. The sunlight coming in from the window highlighted how ravaged they were with their haunted eyes and pallid skin. Tama ran her fingertips over the delicate indentations at Heero's temples and through his hair, which had once been thick and glossy and was now baby thin and as brittle as straw. He still did not move and neither did Wufei, even as Tama touched his face and ran her fingers through his hair in what she prayed was a comforting, mothering manner. Even as she kissed them both and left, there was no response but for tiny, desperately scared flinches that she knew their ravaged minds prayed she couldn't see.

*****

"Hey, guys."

For a scant moment Duo looked at Tama, bringing her hopes up and then dashing them as he turned his head back to stare once more out the window at nothing at all. Trowa blinked sleepily at her, but there was no other reaction. Walker and the wizards had found them on the third floor, in twin hospital beds not unlike the ones that lay in now. Here they were hooked up to IVs that pumped anti-rejection drugs into their bloodstreams. There they had been attached from every orifice, each bodily function overridden and taken over, each small physical secret broken open, violated and dissected for later use. Even now Tama could see the bandages that concealed neatly sewn vivisection incisions, unspeakably ugly in their uniformity.

Quietly and without making any sudden movements, Tama took a seat in the chair between the two beds and crossed her legs. She had taken pains to wear pants and a long-sleeved shirt today. A skirt or t-shirt would only serve to upset Duo or Trowa. Even now Trowa had the covers tucked neatly around his legs, covering the mechanical anomaly that was housed there. Duo's covers were also over him, wrapped tightly around his torso and arms, covering his own so-called improvement, leaving his feet bare. Tama put an extra blanket over them so as to keep his feet warm, as well as to keep from upsetting Trowa.

"Are you guys doing okay today?" Tama asked, just before the stifling silence tried to reach out and seize her by the throat.

Duo looked away. Trowa nodded slowly.

"Could you…?" the Silencer began, then stopped. His voice was tiny, tinder-dry and almost meek, as though he hadn't used it in months, which could easily have been the case.

"Yes, Trowa?" Tama tried not to let the hope run too strongly into her voice. This was probably the first time he had talked to anyone since the children had been rescued. "What would you like?"

"Could you…loosen my blanket?" He bit his lip and looked away. "Please? The other…. It…it's…digging into my other ankle and…"

"Of course, of course. Anything you want."

She reached out and pulled the blanket gently from under Trowa's heels, revealing for a moment the skeletal frame of the half-formed mechanical limb that had replaced his right leg. There had been no reason for the amputation. No reason other than the interests of what could loosely be called science. As gently as she could, the middle Broman sister took up Trowa's remaining ankle and moved the leg over a bit before tucking the covers back around him. Throughout this, Duo watched them through glittering violet pools of cool despair.

"Better?"

"Yes." The Silencer bit his lip. "Have the scientists said anything?"

Duo's eyes narrowed to violet slits at Tama's hesitation. "I…."

What could she tell them? That the prosthetics were too deeply rooted to be amputated without even more massive tissue loss? That there was no way that these freakish substitutes for nature could be modified or studied or even given proper coverings without completely disabling themselves? Whatever bastards they were, Tama had to admit Black Hood knew how to protect their prototypes.

"I haven't heard anything." The lie stabbed her, making the fake smile pasted to her face jump slightly. She tried a little laugh. "I suppose everything'll be all right."

Trowa gave her a careful little smile, rusty with disuse, as Duo closed his eyes and ignored her. "Yeah. Could be."

Tama grinned back at him.

I am the worst human being in the world.

*****

The room was so dark it took a moment for Tama's eyes to adjust. After a moment, the darkness negotiated itself into ghostly shapes. Here a bed, there a table. The only thing Tama could not see was the room's only occupant. Not that it would be hard to find him.

"If you are lost in your way …"

"Quatre?" Tama knew this song. Zach sang it around the house sometimes, earning groans of mock agony from Misty before she would stop him and take over, her voice rising over the invisible crescendo of traditional English instruments. Tama's heart skipped over itself in grief before settling back into its now-usual place of numb sorrow. Her grandfather hadn't sung it since Misty had been taken, and in light of what had happened to his beloved granddaughter, there was little chance of him ever singing it again. The red-haired warrior's head snapped up as there came a shuffling sound, like that of a small animal trying to retreat further into a beloved corner. Slowly she advanced, stalking cautiously, talking softly all the time. "I really like your song, Quatre. You know, Granddad sings it sometimes."

If there was any recognition there, Quatre did not acknowledge it. Unconcerned, the singing continued on. "Deep in an awesome story. Don't be in doubt and stray …"

Quatre had been found shivering and alone, connected by small wires going directly from his brain to a monstrous device Mira had referred to as the "Buzz Box". From this horrifying contraption, Quatre had been force-fed the emotions of every being in the whole compound. The result had been mental overload as every emotion from libido to rage to joy tore into his psyche and jostled out the original material. Physically the empath was unscathed, save for the slender yellow wires which still protruded from the base of his skull, blending into what was left of the stubble of his sunny hair. But mentally he was a shattered child who did little more than gently rock and sing to himself.

"Do you want something to eat, Quatre?" He hadn't consumed anything solid since he had been rescued, save for water when his voice gave out. Reaching out on impulse to touch his face, Tama felt the supple plastic of a feeding tube threaded into a delicate nostril. "Maybe something to drink?"

The Gentle Noble rocked in tune to the music playing within, ignoring the worried young woman before him. "Cling to your lonesome folly. Now you're too close to the pain…"

Biting her lip, Tama manoeuvred herself and the oblivious boy until he was in her lap, his head against her breast. Despite wanting to be fair, she always knew that this dainty little boy with the achingly blue eyes was her favourite of the lot.

"Let all the rain go further. Come back and kiss me in vain…"

Tama sang along as her eyes filled with helpless tears. Oblivious, Quatre began to play curiously with her fingers. "Mother, oh do not bother."

*****

"Keep it shut."

"Of course." Tama turned and quietly closed the offending door behind her before siting down on the bedside. Huddled under the covers with only her head visible was the youngest Broman sister. For once, Tama had no idea how to begin. Misty looked periodically at the door as though she expected someone to burst through it and commit some unspeakable act of violence. Considering what she had been through, Tama could not fault her. Misty had been found on a floor filled with bedrooms –all deserted now. Some only held beds, others shackles, others instruments of lust-driven torture. The room Walker had led the wizards to had held Misty. As a fatal blow to the very pride of Alaryan's Keep, one of its high ladies had been forced to become a Wife. Even now, days after her rescue, the Keep still reeled with the shock of knowing that such an innocent girl had been forced to work as a whore.

"You got a haircut."

Blinking at this sudden observation, Tama put her hand to her head, ruffling the short auburn tresses that were still left. "Yeah. I think they cut it too short." She laughed nervously. "It looks like the haircut Walker had when he was twelve."

Misty nodded and looked at her hands, allowing the conversation to fall into silence.

Valiantly, Tama tried to restart it. "Are you healing well?"

"No."

Ignoring Tama's protests, Misty let the covers drop, opened her pyjama top and pulled off the bandages wreathing her chest. The brand burned into the delicate skin between her breasts made Tama shudder in horror. It was shaped like a rose, telling all who used her that she was taken in before the age of twenty and that she had been a virgin at the time. An emotionless Kari had told Tama this. The brand had been scoured with wire brushes and sprayed with alcohol to force it to scar. Misty would probably bear it for the rest of her life. The youngest Broman sister looked at Tama with empty eyes. "It's getting infected again." Indeed, the skin around the burn was puffy and sore-looking. Tama resisted the urge to pull her baby sister into her arms and rock her, knowing that the close contact of another body was exactly what she did not want.

"Mom and Dad miss you. So do Ria and Granddad and the boys. They miss you so much." Her mind skipped to the sounds of anguished sobbing coming from her parents' room while she was supposed to be asleep. "They still do."

Misty laughed, a short, choking bark without any real feeling to it. "They don't care."

Tama blinked at the shock the icy words gave her. "What?"

"They won't see me. Shit, who would?" The tiny bard began to wrap herself in the bandages again. "I'm a bloody whore now. Who would waste time with that?"

"Of course they love you!" Tama snapped, her already weakened humour quickly fraying. "It's just that-"

Misty shot her a dead-eyed look. "Allow me to hazard a guess. They all love me so much they can't bear to look at me." She extended an emaciated arm to the side and looked at it, squinting at the elbow joint and how it jutted against her ashen skin. "Can't say I blame them. I've lost fifty pounds since I was taken. Black Hood likes their ladies willowy and slender. And they're happy to take their prostitutes half-dead."

"Misty, don't talk like that," begged Tama. "You're safe now."

This time the angry façade slipped a fraction as the tiny girl bit her lip. "Yeah. But for how long?"

*****

Wow. I'm evil. @_@

Ja ne, minna san!

–LPD *//.^*