Author's notes: Whelp, I got this new chapter written from scratch and
posted in record time! I know, be proud!
KyLara ~ You'll get to see what happens next in this chapter. I'm glad you think the story's good so far. ^^
: P ~ I'm glad you "love the way this is going." I hope you enjoy this chapter just as much, if not more, than the last. ^^
Salena Winner ~ Wow! That good, huh? Lol. I'm flattered. I got this chapter out as soon as I could. Hope you enjoy it.
DragonGirl ~ Really? You think so? ^^ I'm surprised you thought it was that great, but I'm still flattered. I'm also glad I explained things well-- painting a picture in a reader's mind is one of my favorite parts of writing. LOL! Adoring fans? That comes as a shock! ^^ I don't think I've ever had any! And I get it. ^^
starfury3000 ~ I'm glad you think so. I tried my best to write this chapter. ^^ I hope you enjoy it.
key ~ I wrote this chapter as fast as I could. Like I said, it was in record time. I'm happy you thought this story was good enough to continue. ^^
Silver-Star ~ Your waiting days are over, missy! Here's the next chapter for your enjoyment (hopefully). ^^
Lovely Angel ~ I'm happy you like the story so far! Hope you enjoy this chapter as much as the first! ^^
Mystic Angel ~ "Wow" is a big word, much too big for my writing. ^^ But I'm glad you like the story so far. I hope you enjoy this chapter.
Sunshine Fia ~ **pats you on the back** I know, I know. Poor Usagi! Poor Minako! Poor Hiiro! I'm so evil to them. -_-;; Hehe. I'm just glad I'll never be in one of their stories. I'd fear for my health, considering they deserve to pay me back for all their inflicted torture and misery. ^^;; Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter! And I'm sorry, but there are more hardships for our beloved characters. :'(
Dreamertwin ~ Hiiro? How will Hiiro react? Hehe. ^^ You'll see. But perhaps Hiiro's reaction is not the only one you should worry about. -_-;;
Sere Star ~ I'm glad you think so! And I can't get enough Hiiro/Usagi pairings, either. I'm a sucker for the couple, what can I say? ^^ Hope you enjoy this chapter!
Rheia ~ I'm so glad you think it has potential and also that you agree with the main pairing, but I'm flattered that you like the title. ^^ I didn't know how people would like it, although I thought it was a sweet title. I hope you enjoy this chapter!
Vixen ~ Lordie, that's a lot of adjectives! I'm so flattered you think so! I'm undeserving of your compliments. Lol. Seriously. ^^ I'm extremely glad you seem to like and enjoy the story so far, however. Why, you're one of my favorite authors! I hope you enjoy this chapter as well. ^^
Moon Smurf ~ I'm sincerely glad you like the story enough that you want me to e-mail you when I update, but unfortunately I usually don't have enough time on my hands to e-mail everybody who requests it of me. I'm terribly sorry. : ( I hope you stop by and notice that this story has been updated, though, even without my notifying you. If you do happen to realize it's been updated, I hope you read and enjoy this chapter. ^^
Sammie ~ I'm happy you think so. -_-;; However, it never occurred to me to involve the sailor senshi in this story. I already had some of the plot worked out, and to add the sailor senshi part would alter a lot of things completely. I'll think about it, however. ^^ Hope you enjoy this chapter, even though it is senshi-free.
Now, on with the show...
~~~~
The memory was like a knife cutting into him. Slicing deep into him with hate.
The Breaking.
He had been running alongside Usagi in the sunshine. They had taken a picnic out into the garden area--which had been solely Usagi's idea--and decided to come back a different way, a way that took them past a pond with a small bridge over it.
Hiiro remembered everything in incredible detail. Remembered the time on the watch on his wrist, flashing 12:14 P.M., then the temperature, 93 degrees, and the date. He had been fourteen years old. All the numbers were part of his memory, all of his life was part of the memory.
Usagi had just turned to smile at him about something and he looked over her head and saw them.
Assassins.
They were kneeling behind a clump of bushes, a strange clump of bushes with thorns and pink flowers. He saw them and they saw him. They saw Usagi. Hiiro was going to grab his friend's hand and run, but something stopped him.
If they ran, their watchers would be sure to shoot. It occurred to Hiiro that they were here on account of him. They wanted him. Only him.
Short black hair, the one man had. Wearing some kind of navy pullover shirt and jeans. His partner was completely concealed in the leaves of the bushes save for his face.
Hiiro saw this and more, saw the Breaking and saw more later, but the memory came in pieces, came in scenes like this--Usagi smiling, him looking over her head to see the bushes and the assassins, the time and temperature, the blue sky, the navy shirt of the man, the burning horrors of the memory were exact.
The Breaking.
~~~~
Hiiro opened his eyes and felt white-hot desperation clamp down on his insides, squeezing and pulling. For seconds he did not know where he was, only that the Breaking was still happening and he was going to lose Usagi.
Lose her.
Forever.
But light fell over his face, light cut into slivers that shone through the drawn blinds. He twisted on his bed to look away from the morning sunlight and refreshed himself with a wide yawn. The cold dread dissipated as his head was washed of sleep and he knew it had been but another dream. One out of dozens, hundreds, he had had since the Breaking. Always he relived the day he lost her. Always he feared losing her.
But I've already lost her, he reminded himself. There's no use crying over it, not anymore.
He lay in bed for a moment more, still drowning in his thoughts, before sliding out from underneath the sheets and padding to the adjacent bathroom. He splashed cold water from the faucet on his face and neck. He couldn't shake a queasy sort of uneasiness weighing heavy in his gut.
Blindly reaching for one of the fluffy towels Quatre always insisted on keeping in Hiiro's bathroom, he pulled it from its rack and dried himself. Absently he wondered where the rest of the house's occupants were--he'd heard in a roundabout way that Duo, Wufei, and Trowa were visiting as well.
Sitting on his bed, he threw on his usual "ensemble" of a green shirt, black shorts, and sneakers. It wasn't much, just enough to take care of whatever business at hand. He ran his fingers through his hair.
Already the entire mansion was stirring. He heard voices filtering up from somewhere a few floors down. He needed to get to work. After all, that girl must have been kidnapped by now, right?
He took his time getting to the kitchen, where the sweet aroma of pancakes and eggs and sizzling bacon clung to the hot air. Seated at the table, quite unsurprisingly, were his fellow comrades and former gundam pilots.
Duo looked up at him instantly, almost sensing his presence in the doorway, while Trowa and Wufei barely spared him a glance. Wufei was too busy glaring daggers at Duo. Hiiro decided he wouldn't ask.
Quatre adorned a frilly pink apron--obviously courtesy of one of his many sisters--and stood humming a happy tune before the stove, flipping bacon expertly with the spatula. He turned to Hiiro and smiled warmly. "Good morning, Hiiro. Would you like something to eat? There's plenty here," he said, indicating toward his cooking.
Hiiro nodded. He sat at the large round dining table, crossed his arms over his chest, and waited patiently, staring into nothing. He felt a tap on his shoulder. Duo was grinning at him and asked cheerfully, "So what have you been up to these past two weeks? Wufei, Trowa and I haven't seen hide nor hair of you since the last mission."
Oh. Right. Hiiro had forgotten to contact them. That is, of course, they didn't really need to know his exact location every moment, but he knew they had grown closer since the end of the war and that they expected him to at least notify them of his condition. His gundam had crashed and sunk in the lake. Who wouldn't wonder whether or not he was dead? Quatre hadn't even known, and Hiiro had been staying in his mansion--it just went to show how very big beyond all reason Quatre's mansions really were.
"I've been around," he said calmly, just as Wufei switched on the television set on the counter. A woman's face materialized. She was staring out at them and her lips were moving, but there was no sound.
"Turn it up," Trowa instructed.
"...diplomat Tsukino Kenji. The search has been in progress since late yesterday afternoon. No traces have been found. The Tsukino family is still waiting for a ransom note," she said seriously and shook her head, adding, "So sad. That poor girl. We'll show her picture again."
A photograph of a smiling teenager, her blond hair pulled back and away from her face into unusual buns and pigtails. Blue eyes. She was sitting at a table in front of a birthday cake all a-glow with candles. Someone was sitting next to her, but his face was partially cut off. Hiiro recognized the boy as himself. He recognized the girl, too.
There was a shattering sound. Quatre was trembling, his broken coffee mug in a thousand pieces on the floor, steaming coffee pooling around his feet. "Oh, my God..."
The girl. She was Usagi.
~~~~
A groan. Some ruffling of cloth, shifting noises and scraping. She opened her eyes and screamed.
She did not know where she was, only that their hands were on her and she was going to die or worse, and she screamed until her breath was gone.
Then silence, filled with sobs as she pulled air into her lungs, half crying. How could it be so quiet? Moments ago there was nothing but noise, gunshots and screaming, grunting and tearing, yells, now quiet. She realized her limbs were outrageously stiff, as if she had been lying on a hard floor all night. Her legs felt dead and she tried to raise herself up and see them, but pain hammered into her--it originated from her side and shoulder--and made her breaths shorten into gasps and she stopped.
She didn't look at her surroundings, they were unimportant. She thought she might be laying on a cot of some sort--certainly it wasn't a bed, being so uncomfortable--with a cover and a small pillow.
Then she closed her eyes, only this time to rest, to save something of herself. She lay on her good side and put her head on her arm because that was all she could do now, all she could think of being able to do. She faded and slept, fell to where fatigue drug her, deep and down.
~~~~
Usagi felt as if she were drifting in a sort of unreality. All around her there was darkness, pitch-black darkness that leered and clawed at her. She screamed.
~~~~
And suddenly she was bathed in cold gray light. She blinked. As the room was pulled into clarity, out of the fuzzy world of sleep and gloom and into reality, the throbbing in her forehead grew to be a splitting migraine.
She turned her head without moving her body and saw, through the dim light, the room in which she lay. It was empty and sickeningly white--like a hospital room--and smelled stale. The only object in the room was the small, thin, inadequately covered cot. Directly to her left a boarded-up window allowed a few rays of dawn to sliver in through its cracks. It was cold.
And she was still in pain, all-over pain. Her legs were cramped and drawn up, tight and aching, and her back hurt when she tried to move.
Her forehead felt massively swollen to the touch, almost like a mound out over her eyes, and it was so tender that when her fingers grazed it she nearly cried, but there was nothing she could do about it. She must have acquired it from her fall.
Worse still were the keening throbs in her shoulder and side which pulsed with every beat of her heart. It seemed the burning had dulled to a raw sting. When she would move or disturb the bullet wounds, however, agony consumed her like white-hot fire.
Once, she reached down and discovered her side to be thoroughly bandaged. Her shoulder was the same. They--"they" meaning her kidnappers--must have applied medication to it. Otherwise, she would have long-since bled to death.
She sat up--or tried to. The first time she fell back. But on the second attempt, grunting with the effort, biting her lips against the pain until they bled, squeezing tears from her eyes, she managed to come to a sitting position and scrunched sideways until her back was against the hard wall where she sat facing the window, watching as the light filtering in through the cracks got brighter and warmer.
Her clothes were dirty and clammy and a faint chill swept through her. She pulled the thin blanket of the cot, a sheet really, around her shoulders, and tried to secure what heat her body could find. She could not think, could not make thought patterns work right. Things seemed to go back and forth between reality and imagination--except that it was all reality. One second she seemed only to have imagined that she had been kidnapped, that she had fought off grown men alongside Minako, that she was here in this cold, dark place; that it had all happened to some other person or in a movie playing in her mind.
Then she would feel her clothes, damp and cold, and her forehead and side and shoulder would slash pains through her thoughts and she would know it was real, that it had really happened. But all in a haze, all in a haze- world. So she sat and stared at the window and felt the pain come and go in waves.
It took an hour, perhaps two--she could not measure time yet and didn't care--for enough light to come through the window to allow her to see properly. With this light came footsteps. Slowly the building was stirring. For a few minutes she heard voices right outside the door. Then the door creaked open.
Three men entered. They were quiet, walking in her direction, and seemed not to notice she was awake until one of them looked up. Suddenly they all stopped moving. She saw that the man who had first noticed her had fair hair and a fair complexion and carried a first-aid kit. The others were empty-handed.
Their mild startlement quickly disappeared as they continued to her bedside, where they stopped. The blond man set the kit on the floor. He nodded to his two companions. She thought she saw him glance at her. She also thought she saw something in his eyes.
Extreme pity.
By then, the two men already had her lying on her stomach and were pinning her arms and legs to the bed, firmly but gently. But when the man--who she now knew was an actual doctor--took a pair of odd-looking tweezers from his kit and she realized what his intentions were, she started thrashing and screaming for all she was worth and they struggled to hold her still.
Quick hands removed her bandages. She sensed him bringing the tweezers to her bullet wound in her side. She felt a stab--which was probably just a poke--in her tender flesh and a burning pain, a pain double that of actually getting shot, seared through her. Pain sizzled her insides and flushed her cheeks a hot red, and she was sobbing wretchedly.
"Shh, the side wounds are always the hardest, dear..." she heard the doctor murmur.
Warm blood was trickling steadily from the re-opened wound and soaking into the fabric of the cot. "No...please stop..please..." she choked brokenly. But he didn't stop. He didn't slow down and let her take a breather before digging into her wound again and again, prodding for the bullet. Finally she heard a squishy sucking sound and a barely audible 'pop,' and something small and metallic was dropped into a container.
The doctor had been right--side wounds were harder. Eventually her body went numb, everything went numb. She couldn't focus. The room was spinning and they were working on her shoulder with the tweezers when she lapsed into unconsciousness.
She had a departing thought...
She thought, not quite knowing whether to be grateful or to just wallow in her physical agony, At least the bullet's gone.
~~~~
He looked through the window and into the room, watched her sleep fitfully, the quietly strangled sobs gurgling up her throat and forming one word. No, one name.
"Hiiro," she cried, for what was probably the thousandth time that day. "Hiiro, Hiiro...Hiiro."
He fixated the nearby men with a cold, disapproving eye. The girl, the one that had taken so much careful planning to kidnap, had been left untended until that morning. She had been shot twice--or so he'd heard--and the bullets had been left alone too long and the wounds had already been in the process of closing, of healing. Removing the bullets and re-opening the wounds had caused further damage. Now, they were infected. She was hot with fever.
The doctor was the only man who didn't cower in fright under his reprimanding. "I removed the bullets and cleaned her wounds as best I could. I can only do so much," he had said grimly. "I have faith that she will not die."
Growling lowly, Mr. Chiba walked into the room and slammed the door shut behind him. He went to where she slept on the small cot and, bending down, placed a cool hand over her forehead. She hiccuped and moaned, rolling with much effort to the side.
Dried up rivers of tears framed her face, made her closed eyes and flushed cheeks puffy. Her gleaming blond hair was disheveled and coming undone from her buns and pigtails. Her clothes had been changed. She adorned a large white T-shirt that reached her mid-thigh, leaving her shapely legs exposed.
Unexpectedly he reached out and released her hair from its bondage--thick masses of it cascaded over the side of the cot and onto the floor. He rubbed a piece of it between his thumb and forefinger and it was silky- soft.
Mr. Chiba noted that she was not a girl, but not quite a woman. She was developing, yes, and she was pretty--full, generous lips, a wide forehead, fair eyebrows, high cheek-bones, and a creamy complexion combined to create an altogether angelic face.
If she healed, perhaps he could make more use of her than simply a ticket to money. Much more.
~~~~
Author's Notes: Review, please? I really enjoyed writing this story so far and I need to know if anybody enjoyed reading it. ^^
KyLara ~ You'll get to see what happens next in this chapter. I'm glad you think the story's good so far. ^^
: P ~ I'm glad you "love the way this is going." I hope you enjoy this chapter just as much, if not more, than the last. ^^
Salena Winner ~ Wow! That good, huh? Lol. I'm flattered. I got this chapter out as soon as I could. Hope you enjoy it.
DragonGirl ~ Really? You think so? ^^ I'm surprised you thought it was that great, but I'm still flattered. I'm also glad I explained things well-- painting a picture in a reader's mind is one of my favorite parts of writing. LOL! Adoring fans? That comes as a shock! ^^ I don't think I've ever had any! And I get it. ^^
starfury3000 ~ I'm glad you think so. I tried my best to write this chapter. ^^ I hope you enjoy it.
key ~ I wrote this chapter as fast as I could. Like I said, it was in record time. I'm happy you thought this story was good enough to continue. ^^
Silver-Star ~ Your waiting days are over, missy! Here's the next chapter for your enjoyment (hopefully). ^^
Lovely Angel ~ I'm happy you like the story so far! Hope you enjoy this chapter as much as the first! ^^
Mystic Angel ~ "Wow" is a big word, much too big for my writing. ^^ But I'm glad you like the story so far. I hope you enjoy this chapter.
Sunshine Fia ~ **pats you on the back** I know, I know. Poor Usagi! Poor Minako! Poor Hiiro! I'm so evil to them. -_-;; Hehe. I'm just glad I'll never be in one of their stories. I'd fear for my health, considering they deserve to pay me back for all their inflicted torture and misery. ^^;; Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter! And I'm sorry, but there are more hardships for our beloved characters. :'(
Dreamertwin ~ Hiiro? How will Hiiro react? Hehe. ^^ You'll see. But perhaps Hiiro's reaction is not the only one you should worry about. -_-;;
Sere Star ~ I'm glad you think so! And I can't get enough Hiiro/Usagi pairings, either. I'm a sucker for the couple, what can I say? ^^ Hope you enjoy this chapter!
Rheia ~ I'm so glad you think it has potential and also that you agree with the main pairing, but I'm flattered that you like the title. ^^ I didn't know how people would like it, although I thought it was a sweet title. I hope you enjoy this chapter!
Vixen ~ Lordie, that's a lot of adjectives! I'm so flattered you think so! I'm undeserving of your compliments. Lol. Seriously. ^^ I'm extremely glad you seem to like and enjoy the story so far, however. Why, you're one of my favorite authors! I hope you enjoy this chapter as well. ^^
Moon Smurf ~ I'm sincerely glad you like the story enough that you want me to e-mail you when I update, but unfortunately I usually don't have enough time on my hands to e-mail everybody who requests it of me. I'm terribly sorry. : ( I hope you stop by and notice that this story has been updated, though, even without my notifying you. If you do happen to realize it's been updated, I hope you read and enjoy this chapter. ^^
Sammie ~ I'm happy you think so. -_-;; However, it never occurred to me to involve the sailor senshi in this story. I already had some of the plot worked out, and to add the sailor senshi part would alter a lot of things completely. I'll think about it, however. ^^ Hope you enjoy this chapter, even though it is senshi-free.
Now, on with the show...
~~~~
The memory was like a knife cutting into him. Slicing deep into him with hate.
The Breaking.
He had been running alongside Usagi in the sunshine. They had taken a picnic out into the garden area--which had been solely Usagi's idea--and decided to come back a different way, a way that took them past a pond with a small bridge over it.
Hiiro remembered everything in incredible detail. Remembered the time on the watch on his wrist, flashing 12:14 P.M., then the temperature, 93 degrees, and the date. He had been fourteen years old. All the numbers were part of his memory, all of his life was part of the memory.
Usagi had just turned to smile at him about something and he looked over her head and saw them.
Assassins.
They were kneeling behind a clump of bushes, a strange clump of bushes with thorns and pink flowers. He saw them and they saw him. They saw Usagi. Hiiro was going to grab his friend's hand and run, but something stopped him.
If they ran, their watchers would be sure to shoot. It occurred to Hiiro that they were here on account of him. They wanted him. Only him.
Short black hair, the one man had. Wearing some kind of navy pullover shirt and jeans. His partner was completely concealed in the leaves of the bushes save for his face.
Hiiro saw this and more, saw the Breaking and saw more later, but the memory came in pieces, came in scenes like this--Usagi smiling, him looking over her head to see the bushes and the assassins, the time and temperature, the blue sky, the navy shirt of the man, the burning horrors of the memory were exact.
The Breaking.
~~~~
Hiiro opened his eyes and felt white-hot desperation clamp down on his insides, squeezing and pulling. For seconds he did not know where he was, only that the Breaking was still happening and he was going to lose Usagi.
Lose her.
Forever.
But light fell over his face, light cut into slivers that shone through the drawn blinds. He twisted on his bed to look away from the morning sunlight and refreshed himself with a wide yawn. The cold dread dissipated as his head was washed of sleep and he knew it had been but another dream. One out of dozens, hundreds, he had had since the Breaking. Always he relived the day he lost her. Always he feared losing her.
But I've already lost her, he reminded himself. There's no use crying over it, not anymore.
He lay in bed for a moment more, still drowning in his thoughts, before sliding out from underneath the sheets and padding to the adjacent bathroom. He splashed cold water from the faucet on his face and neck. He couldn't shake a queasy sort of uneasiness weighing heavy in his gut.
Blindly reaching for one of the fluffy towels Quatre always insisted on keeping in Hiiro's bathroom, he pulled it from its rack and dried himself. Absently he wondered where the rest of the house's occupants were--he'd heard in a roundabout way that Duo, Wufei, and Trowa were visiting as well.
Sitting on his bed, he threw on his usual "ensemble" of a green shirt, black shorts, and sneakers. It wasn't much, just enough to take care of whatever business at hand. He ran his fingers through his hair.
Already the entire mansion was stirring. He heard voices filtering up from somewhere a few floors down. He needed to get to work. After all, that girl must have been kidnapped by now, right?
He took his time getting to the kitchen, where the sweet aroma of pancakes and eggs and sizzling bacon clung to the hot air. Seated at the table, quite unsurprisingly, were his fellow comrades and former gundam pilots.
Duo looked up at him instantly, almost sensing his presence in the doorway, while Trowa and Wufei barely spared him a glance. Wufei was too busy glaring daggers at Duo. Hiiro decided he wouldn't ask.
Quatre adorned a frilly pink apron--obviously courtesy of one of his many sisters--and stood humming a happy tune before the stove, flipping bacon expertly with the spatula. He turned to Hiiro and smiled warmly. "Good morning, Hiiro. Would you like something to eat? There's plenty here," he said, indicating toward his cooking.
Hiiro nodded. He sat at the large round dining table, crossed his arms over his chest, and waited patiently, staring into nothing. He felt a tap on his shoulder. Duo was grinning at him and asked cheerfully, "So what have you been up to these past two weeks? Wufei, Trowa and I haven't seen hide nor hair of you since the last mission."
Oh. Right. Hiiro had forgotten to contact them. That is, of course, they didn't really need to know his exact location every moment, but he knew they had grown closer since the end of the war and that they expected him to at least notify them of his condition. His gundam had crashed and sunk in the lake. Who wouldn't wonder whether or not he was dead? Quatre hadn't even known, and Hiiro had been staying in his mansion--it just went to show how very big beyond all reason Quatre's mansions really were.
"I've been around," he said calmly, just as Wufei switched on the television set on the counter. A woman's face materialized. She was staring out at them and her lips were moving, but there was no sound.
"Turn it up," Trowa instructed.
"...diplomat Tsukino Kenji. The search has been in progress since late yesterday afternoon. No traces have been found. The Tsukino family is still waiting for a ransom note," she said seriously and shook her head, adding, "So sad. That poor girl. We'll show her picture again."
A photograph of a smiling teenager, her blond hair pulled back and away from her face into unusual buns and pigtails. Blue eyes. She was sitting at a table in front of a birthday cake all a-glow with candles. Someone was sitting next to her, but his face was partially cut off. Hiiro recognized the boy as himself. He recognized the girl, too.
There was a shattering sound. Quatre was trembling, his broken coffee mug in a thousand pieces on the floor, steaming coffee pooling around his feet. "Oh, my God..."
The girl. She was Usagi.
~~~~
A groan. Some ruffling of cloth, shifting noises and scraping. She opened her eyes and screamed.
She did not know where she was, only that their hands were on her and she was going to die or worse, and she screamed until her breath was gone.
Then silence, filled with sobs as she pulled air into her lungs, half crying. How could it be so quiet? Moments ago there was nothing but noise, gunshots and screaming, grunting and tearing, yells, now quiet. She realized her limbs were outrageously stiff, as if she had been lying on a hard floor all night. Her legs felt dead and she tried to raise herself up and see them, but pain hammered into her--it originated from her side and shoulder--and made her breaths shorten into gasps and she stopped.
She didn't look at her surroundings, they were unimportant. She thought she might be laying on a cot of some sort--certainly it wasn't a bed, being so uncomfortable--with a cover and a small pillow.
Then she closed her eyes, only this time to rest, to save something of herself. She lay on her good side and put her head on her arm because that was all she could do now, all she could think of being able to do. She faded and slept, fell to where fatigue drug her, deep and down.
~~~~
Usagi felt as if she were drifting in a sort of unreality. All around her there was darkness, pitch-black darkness that leered and clawed at her. She screamed.
~~~~
And suddenly she was bathed in cold gray light. She blinked. As the room was pulled into clarity, out of the fuzzy world of sleep and gloom and into reality, the throbbing in her forehead grew to be a splitting migraine.
She turned her head without moving her body and saw, through the dim light, the room in which she lay. It was empty and sickeningly white--like a hospital room--and smelled stale. The only object in the room was the small, thin, inadequately covered cot. Directly to her left a boarded-up window allowed a few rays of dawn to sliver in through its cracks. It was cold.
And she was still in pain, all-over pain. Her legs were cramped and drawn up, tight and aching, and her back hurt when she tried to move.
Her forehead felt massively swollen to the touch, almost like a mound out over her eyes, and it was so tender that when her fingers grazed it she nearly cried, but there was nothing she could do about it. She must have acquired it from her fall.
Worse still were the keening throbs in her shoulder and side which pulsed with every beat of her heart. It seemed the burning had dulled to a raw sting. When she would move or disturb the bullet wounds, however, agony consumed her like white-hot fire.
Once, she reached down and discovered her side to be thoroughly bandaged. Her shoulder was the same. They--"they" meaning her kidnappers--must have applied medication to it. Otherwise, she would have long-since bled to death.
She sat up--or tried to. The first time she fell back. But on the second attempt, grunting with the effort, biting her lips against the pain until they bled, squeezing tears from her eyes, she managed to come to a sitting position and scrunched sideways until her back was against the hard wall where she sat facing the window, watching as the light filtering in through the cracks got brighter and warmer.
Her clothes were dirty and clammy and a faint chill swept through her. She pulled the thin blanket of the cot, a sheet really, around her shoulders, and tried to secure what heat her body could find. She could not think, could not make thought patterns work right. Things seemed to go back and forth between reality and imagination--except that it was all reality. One second she seemed only to have imagined that she had been kidnapped, that she had fought off grown men alongside Minako, that she was here in this cold, dark place; that it had all happened to some other person or in a movie playing in her mind.
Then she would feel her clothes, damp and cold, and her forehead and side and shoulder would slash pains through her thoughts and she would know it was real, that it had really happened. But all in a haze, all in a haze- world. So she sat and stared at the window and felt the pain come and go in waves.
It took an hour, perhaps two--she could not measure time yet and didn't care--for enough light to come through the window to allow her to see properly. With this light came footsteps. Slowly the building was stirring. For a few minutes she heard voices right outside the door. Then the door creaked open.
Three men entered. They were quiet, walking in her direction, and seemed not to notice she was awake until one of them looked up. Suddenly they all stopped moving. She saw that the man who had first noticed her had fair hair and a fair complexion and carried a first-aid kit. The others were empty-handed.
Their mild startlement quickly disappeared as they continued to her bedside, where they stopped. The blond man set the kit on the floor. He nodded to his two companions. She thought she saw him glance at her. She also thought she saw something in his eyes.
Extreme pity.
By then, the two men already had her lying on her stomach and were pinning her arms and legs to the bed, firmly but gently. But when the man--who she now knew was an actual doctor--took a pair of odd-looking tweezers from his kit and she realized what his intentions were, she started thrashing and screaming for all she was worth and they struggled to hold her still.
Quick hands removed her bandages. She sensed him bringing the tweezers to her bullet wound in her side. She felt a stab--which was probably just a poke--in her tender flesh and a burning pain, a pain double that of actually getting shot, seared through her. Pain sizzled her insides and flushed her cheeks a hot red, and she was sobbing wretchedly.
"Shh, the side wounds are always the hardest, dear..." she heard the doctor murmur.
Warm blood was trickling steadily from the re-opened wound and soaking into the fabric of the cot. "No...please stop..please..." she choked brokenly. But he didn't stop. He didn't slow down and let her take a breather before digging into her wound again and again, prodding for the bullet. Finally she heard a squishy sucking sound and a barely audible 'pop,' and something small and metallic was dropped into a container.
The doctor had been right--side wounds were harder. Eventually her body went numb, everything went numb. She couldn't focus. The room was spinning and they were working on her shoulder with the tweezers when she lapsed into unconsciousness.
She had a departing thought...
She thought, not quite knowing whether to be grateful or to just wallow in her physical agony, At least the bullet's gone.
~~~~
He looked through the window and into the room, watched her sleep fitfully, the quietly strangled sobs gurgling up her throat and forming one word. No, one name.
"Hiiro," she cried, for what was probably the thousandth time that day. "Hiiro, Hiiro...Hiiro."
He fixated the nearby men with a cold, disapproving eye. The girl, the one that had taken so much careful planning to kidnap, had been left untended until that morning. She had been shot twice--or so he'd heard--and the bullets had been left alone too long and the wounds had already been in the process of closing, of healing. Removing the bullets and re-opening the wounds had caused further damage. Now, they were infected. She was hot with fever.
The doctor was the only man who didn't cower in fright under his reprimanding. "I removed the bullets and cleaned her wounds as best I could. I can only do so much," he had said grimly. "I have faith that she will not die."
Growling lowly, Mr. Chiba walked into the room and slammed the door shut behind him. He went to where she slept on the small cot and, bending down, placed a cool hand over her forehead. She hiccuped and moaned, rolling with much effort to the side.
Dried up rivers of tears framed her face, made her closed eyes and flushed cheeks puffy. Her gleaming blond hair was disheveled and coming undone from her buns and pigtails. Her clothes had been changed. She adorned a large white T-shirt that reached her mid-thigh, leaving her shapely legs exposed.
Unexpectedly he reached out and released her hair from its bondage--thick masses of it cascaded over the side of the cot and onto the floor. He rubbed a piece of it between his thumb and forefinger and it was silky- soft.
Mr. Chiba noted that she was not a girl, but not quite a woman. She was developing, yes, and she was pretty--full, generous lips, a wide forehead, fair eyebrows, high cheek-bones, and a creamy complexion combined to create an altogether angelic face.
If she healed, perhaps he could make more use of her than simply a ticket to money. Much more.
~~~~
Author's Notes: Review, please? I really enjoyed writing this story so far and I need to know if anybody enjoyed reading it. ^^