sage/nahui: to solve my pending problems with various lawyers, somnambulating has offered to perform sexual favors for them if they agree to leave me alone.
Lawyers: *agree to leave sage/nahui alone*
random people: *decide to pretend to be lawyers*
somnambulating: Hey!
sage/nahui: I'd run if I were you.
There's just the question of being it
Your father ran from the stable.
I stopped
and stared
without blinking,
and I cried
to see
your eyes grieving,
and I tried
to move.
In a dream I was footbound,
tied down,
forced to stare at the headlights
before
they ran
me through.
The Blood Group – Odin
04.1
"You can't take him!"
Neither man responded.
"He's a minor, only a legal guardian can check him
out. You need permis–"
The nurse's speech was interrupted by a crumpled piece of paper hitting him squarely in the back of the head. Syaoran was just exiting the room, half-carried, half-dragged by Yukito and Touya. The doors closed.
The nurse bent down to pick up the projectile, a business card that had been crushed in a fist, not three hours ago. "Call her. If you want permission, you can get it."
"This is not at all advisable, miss. He's far too weak to be moved, and we don't even know what he has yet."
"And I do. So I'm taking him home."
"Miss, you can't–"
"Call her." Sakura walked out before the nurse could retort another prohibition. Her steps were action-movie-slow—lone hero(ine) makes an exit—, as she pushed open the double doors. She could feel the slight vibration on the floors, feel the rush of the air conditioning curtain that flew over the threshold as it messed with her hair, she could see herself through camera eyes—the rescuer, the savior, angsting.
It was disgusting. This wasn't even about her.
Outside, she leaned against the pillar that separated hospital door from hospital window, and watched as Yuki and her brother settled Syaoran in the backseat of their car, next to a coddling and worried Eriol. The older boys got in and drove off. She'd agreed to walk. She needed it, gods knew.
The gnarled mangrove roots seemed to get further away, woody, brown, tangly and rank. Syaoran's senses had been fleshy and green, she remembered, tender and velvety, long and thin, like strawberry runners, reaching for her; like vine buds. She had loved to feel their whisper against her, whenever he saw her, heard her or somehow became aware of her. She'd catch sight of them as they neared her, and wait expectantly, in the lapse of just an instant, for Syaoran's face to light up, for the vine to wrap gently around her—her wrist, ankle, sometimes throat.
The runners were gone, strangled by the knobby and contorted roots, roots that hated her, that hurt him.
The mangrove tree seemed to get farther and farther away, water rushing away from behind her, making rivulets against the back of her thigh, like she were standing with the ocean water around her thighs as a wave receded, like she were the one moving away. The last tip of the longest root disappeared from her sight as the water drained away from her, leaving her feet firmly planted on a dry, cracked concrete sidewalk around a sterile and cold hospital, before the black asphalt plain of a parking lot, in an absent, empty city.
She started walking home. Before long, she was wondering exactly where that was.
Penguin Park was emptier than the streets on a chilly Sunday morning. Maybe because it was a chilly Sunday morning, and playing was even less tempting than walking.
Air felt cold on the skin; sunlight, warm. The passage from light to shade meant the passage from hot to cold. Under the intermittent shadows the trees' branches cast, Sakura wondered when spring would make up its mind and decide to finally be there.
Halfway through the park, her aimless walking found a direction. She needed to sit. And think. She really needed to think. She neared it with doubtful, shuffling steps and let her hand hover over it before sitting. Cold seemed to radiate from every inch of the surface. The smooth concrete mouth of the King Penguin felt like an unreal version of ice: dry and gray.
Sakura sat. And contemplated her own bangs.
They were jagged, long and obtrusive. Their blunt, definite ends fanned a bit before her eyes, and for an instant she could think of nothing but the unreality of things when seen from very close.
Thoughts just wouldn't come. Just when she needed them.
Hair over her eyes, she wondered how it was that, at times, she could see it, and at others, see through it. The memory of an elegant cheekbone through the light strands hit her like an ice pick twisting below her lungs. Her chest wanted to collapse.
She wouldn't cry.
"It's clean." Small scurrying sounds scampered over the apartment like little rodents; shuffles, shoves, squeaks and creaks as Eriol moved furniture and objects out of the way, making sure none of Sakura's presence remained in any corner of it. "Bring him in."
Sakura had become very familiar with her own ceiling.
She had lain in bed for a couple of hours now, as night crept more solidly over her window, as her entire body started to tickle from lack of use. She felt nothing but her own pulse over her belly, under her ribs. She had intently listened to Azure Ray until every wafting note and wispy mutter became hollower than the ocean and as meaningful as glycerin.
She was perfectly ready to spend the entire week just here, just like this. Pondering on how no matter how much she wasn't the one in pain, she was; and no matter how much she wasn't the one attacked, she was. Pondering just how much of this came from her and what she'd asked him and promised him.
A twee band from Spain came on and it was all but disgustingly grotesque. She moved to press stop. And that was it. The dead act was over now. She sat up. Kero was still sitting patiently on her night table, little arms crossed, tail swinging, hoping she'd explain if he won the quiet game.
"Done pretending I'm not here?"
"Would you believe me if I said no?"
"Sakura…" it was both a plea and a whine.
She sighed, rubbed her hands over her face, and looked up. At the ceiling's corner, not at Kero. "Fine, then," she threw her arms without even any real exasperation. "What is it?"
"Are you alright?"
"Oh, alright, yeah," she sniffed, tried to hide it. Her voice was dead and deadpan. "Fine really, just peachy."
The guardian said her name again, with the same inflection and the same meaning. "Tell me. I need you to tell me what sh–"
"She's blackmailing me."
Kero's plushie-brow furrowed in consternation. "What, with the brat? She's using her son's health to twist your arm? That's–"
"Sick."
"What does she want you to do?"
"Give up."
She didn't let him ask for any details. The sound of the front door opening came before she even had to refuse to answer. The thought of her brother's return had the stairs rushing away under her feet like running water. A certain urgency, almost an excitement, flooded her from her throat, only to drop dead with even less violence than a heart-attack victim once she reached the bottom step. She stood, saying nothing and barely moving, wondering what she had to say or ask and feeling like a boulder that had fallen by a stream: still and unmovable, but there by random chance.
"He's alright, you were wondering." He skipped the "if", exchanged it for a slight pause. It really wasn't necessary.
"Right. Yeah. He's alright. Good… Really good, I guess."
Touya didn't ask how she was, he knew the answer. With a sympathetic nod, he was ready to leave for his room, but her hauntingly commanding "Touya…" stopped him. He turned to face her.
"How were you…" She sighed, and to herself, "Okay." She ran her hands through her hair. "Did you treat him well?"
"Of course," his slightest outrage, "I know I've–"
"I need you to not hate him."
He didn't say anything.
"You're the closest person to me he'll be seeing. You can't hate him anymore. I need you to not hate him."
"I don't." For once, the truth in his voice didn't frighten him.
"And you can't be scared either."
Of him? For him? Touya's brow furrowed.
"Did you give it to him?"
"I made sure he'd find it."
The touch of small cool lips on his cheek was a surprise. With a quiet "thank you", Sakura bounded back up the stairs to her room. He waited a while before doing the same.
The world was a bit warmer and safer under the olive green comforter, where it was dark and the texture of the fabric seemed to nuzzle him when he moved. Aldous Huxley, he remembered—who had done mescaline and written the book that named The Doors—had been so myopic as a child he was declared legally blind. He kept reading in braille even after glasses and surgery corrected his eyesight, because, he said, that way he could read in bed without his hands getting cold. Syaoran wished for a flashlight. He wished for many things.
A few shudders scurried over his spine, pale ghosts of the kind that had sent him to the ground yesterday morning. Square Heart's notes faded over hollow space as The Black Heart Procession finished playing in the tiny concert hall inside his speakers. The Appleseed Cast replaced them.
Before the song got loud, he could hear Eriol fixing
something in the kitchen.
Inside his stereo's blue glass, a CD-R spun its white face, clean of any handwriting.
Metatext:
Rumors of my death have been wildly exaggerated. Of course, I assume there were rumors. It's far more likely nobody noticed and/or cared. Except for somnambulating, of course, who had been pleasantly harassing me over the several months during which I promised her I'd update. She wounded me with her lack of faith, told me she'd die before I updated. Well I did! And she hasn't! So there.
Lapses like these are the reason why I write one-shots. Makes everybody's life easier.
Thanks again to the many nice reviewers, Iram (Malfalda, baby!), Megumi, Vir-slave, racing rat, Cherry, Dragon's Daughter, et al. Special thanks to Perseph for being a wonderfully supportive helpful beta, and to somnambulating for being an annoying pain in the ass (the thanks are genuine, so don't complain.)
Writing this chapter meant messing around with my over-all outline, so I have to figure the rest of it out before an update. I'll have boring classes this semester again, so I'll probably write more, never fear.
Mo loves Laur, and happy Isaac Asimov's Birthday, everyone!
If I wake up dead, I'll wake up just like any other day.