Girl in Rags

This is my first .hack/SIGN fic. Originally, I wanted to make a Subaru angst fic...but I made this instead. XP I dunno how I feel about how it came out, but I can always use some advice. Oh, and the disclaimer...I own none of the characters. I don't own the song. I don't own .hack/SIGN. If I did, I wouldn't be writing this thing. O.o

"Subaru? Are you crying?"

It's a strange feeling, trying to embrace somebody who you can't feel. Here I am, a girl in rags, dress and luxuries torn because of my own pride. My own actions - disbanding the Crimson Knights, and taking this day to reflect on who I really was - had turned upside-down. Attacked by somebody who wanted to be me but wasn't me, and defeated, it hurt me. I had stood up for myself, but what good did that do? All it proved is that I still couldn't be somebody. And here I was, trying to get comfort from Tsukasa - somebody who did matter - and I couldn't feel him.

His arm was around me. If I didn't look, I wouldn't have known that it was there, but he could feel me all the same. "Yes," I replied lamely. Already, I began to feel guilty that I was pouring my sorrows on him.

"It's okay. Cry as much as you want," he said. "I'm...I'm right here."

After I logged off, I noticed a drop of liquid on the keyboard. I cringed, remembering how I cried, and how avatars couldn't cry tears. Tsukasa, perhaps, but not I, an ordinary player. Thinking about it, I guess that that's all I was - ordinary. At that moment, when I was torn, my avatar was no different than I, confined to a wheelchair because of standing up for myself. I had refused to join some people whom I thought were friends in harming another girl because she didn't agree with them, and she was having some problems in being what they called a "friend" with them. No, not "harm"...they wanted to kill her. We had all gotten in a car, and I didn't even know what we were doing until they told me three quarters of the way there. I had said "no," and the driver turned to stare at me. The car ran into a tree.

Who I was back then, Mariko - the one with the perfect grades, the one in student council, the one who always tried to help others - was gone. I was paralyzed from the waist down, and confined to a wheelchair. Just like the girl with the torn dress.

I took a tissue from the box of Kleenex that was nearby, and wiped off the teardrop, cursing myself for being so careless. I felt more tears well up, and I frowned in disgust of my own emotions. I began to wonder if Silver Knight was right, that I had used "power without justice." I shook my head, dismissing him from my thoughts. I didn't want to get more worked up than I already had been. He was out of my life now. But, without Tsukasa, whom could I go to for comfort? Who in this hospital would even bother to help me? What use did I have for "The World" anymore, now that I revealed myself as nothing but a fraud?

Crim, I realized suddenly. There was no way that I could contact him in "The World" - I was having doubts of ever returning. However, I had saved his phone number in here, the real world.

"Mariko?"

"Huh?" I looked up at the nurse who was wheeling me to a nearby phone, and felt a tinge of embarrassment. I had almost forgotten my own name, in place of the avatar that I masqueraded as for so long, Subaru.

She rolled her eyes. "Mariko, you shouldn't play that game so much. You're starting to confuse reality with fantasy." Her voice was annoyed, but there was a twinge of concern.

I nodded my head mechanically. What was I supposed to say? "Oh, I'm sorry nurse, but I don't have anybody to relate with in reality, so I'm trying to be somebody in the game"?

"So, who is this friend of yours?"

I smiled. "He's...he's really nice," I replied, almost saying how his character looked and how he fought and stood up for me in the game.

"Where did you meet him?"

I paused, taken aback. How was I supposed to say that I met him in a game, and that he broke the rules by giving me his phone number? How was I supposed to tell her that he was Lord Crim, and that I was Lady Subaru? He was much older than I, at the age of 26 years old. I was only 17.

"School," I lied. My hands gripped the sides of the wheelchair as we got to the phone. All of a sudden, I didn't want to do this, but where else could I go for comfort? How could anybody else understand what I was going through? Despite my feelings of regret, I delved in my pockets and picked up a crumpled piece of paper. I flattened it out, picked up the phone, and began to dial, my fingers almost slipping off the buttons.

The tone rang three times before somebody picked it up.

"Hello?" A female voice answered. She sounded annoyed and angry at the same time. I trembled, and questioned if I should just hang the phone up right there, but decided not to.

"Hi," I said meekly.

"What do you want? Do you have the wrong number?" She sounded like she had been busy, and that I was more of a burden than a blessing, which I probably was.

"Is Crim there?" I asked, trying to keep myself from breaking down.

"Crim? Who's that?"

"We met on 'The World'..."

"That crackpot game? Listen, kid, I don't know who you are, but don't go bothering us. Anyway, he's not here. He's out on a business trip."

I recalled him saying things about going out on trips when I was still Lady Subaru of the Knights. "Who - who are you?" I mustered up the courage to ask.

"If you must know, I'm his girlfriend."

Girlfriend. I sat, gripping the phone in complete shock and silence.

"Hello? Are you there, kid?"

I swallowed, trying to ignore the lump in my throat. I felt my eyes water with tears, as they did that day when I was stripped of my rank and harassed. "Tell him that Subaru called," I mumbled. Obviously, she didn't understand me, but I hung up the phone anyway.

I heard footsteps behind me, and pretty soon, I felt my wheelchair be turned and wheeled back to my room. The warm presence of one of the nurses was behind me.

"So, Mariko, how'd your chat go?"

"It went just fine," I replied, my voice cracking. I wiped a falling tear from my cheeks, trying not to let the nurse see. I felt the chair turn left, toward my room, and I closed my eyes. I heard the hum of my computer, and the footsteps of the nurse as she left

"Call me if you need anything," she said hastily before going out of the room. When she was out of the room, I broke down crying, opening my eyes to peer behind my glasses at the computer and the terminal. It had already been proven to me that the game wasn't that much different from reality. I turned my head toward the doorway, half-thinking of running after the nurse. I wanted her to love me, and offer me true kindness. The nurses were nice and all, but it seemed that they did all this out of habit. There were no exceptions, but who was I to think of this? It dawned on me that all this seemed pretty selfish; I was expecting people to treat me different because of things. But, that couldn't be it, either.

I stared at the terminal in front of me, begging me to come back to "The World." I was no longer Lady Subaru of the Knights, but I refused to be Kana, too. Couldn't I just be Subaru? Or was that truly as selfish as BT had said? I sniffled, and picked the terminal up. "ALTIMIT," the bold letters on the screen said.

I stared at the terminal for a few seconds before putting it on.