Disclaimer: Yeah yeah, I don't own anything so just… shaddup XD.
Author's note: This was just a bizarre idea my mom somehow gave to me and I decided to try out. I also got inspiration from Maiden of the Moon's "More Than Just a Story", which is such a great story itself. I also got a little inspiration from another of her stories, "Dancing in the Rain" though I had completed this when I read the story . It's also great, go read it…after you read mine .
P.S: If anyone's sort of OOC I'm very sorry ;; I'm a bit nervous about posting this, seeing as it's so far fetched. Anyway, hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Just For Her
She doesn't watch movies. She collects them. TV is the enemy after all, anything that keeps her still, giving her time to dwell. Thoughts dance though her head if she remains stationary.
There are many days she exclaimed with happiness, at the bright vibrancy of her newest VHS. It was in a day before the great DVD had been released. She would have loved them, the disk with their marvelous multihued radiance.
"That's great, but are you sure that you don't want to watch the movie? It sounds so interesting, just listen to the summa.." I'm cut short again.
"Nu uh! Movies are so boring! I don't like their stories. Only yours…" she pouts; so young yet so strong. She's different from the others here. So vibrant and innocent; I wondered what brought such a creature here of all places. Those oceanic orbs glanced over my features, then lock with hellfire.
Pale cheeks become rosy with tingling embarrassment. Her silent plea was so familiar. I knew well what she asked, and released a sigh as I held my patience. With an understanding smile I spoke,
"What will it be today? Witches and ghouls, the mysterious Mister Black, or maybe a quest to Camelot?" a smile spread quickly across her features as excitement flared within. I grinned with pride. Then quickly, it fell away again.
"No. I don't want to hear a fairy tale today." She stated with utter seriousness. It almost hurt, as I maintained my smile, but felt as my features frowned. How long had it been now? It was easy to forget, and somehow I had managed to avoid harsh reality. She was 12 years of age wasn't she? I didn't want to think about it.
"Then what do you want to hear today?" My tone was icier than I intended, masquerading my disappointment. She reacted, as a visible chill rose across the child's skin, and guilt burned inside my chest.
"I… I want to know why I'm here. I want to know where my movies come from, and this television set a. . and my bed… And why I'm not allowed to go past the old wooden fence and why you got so afraid when I tried… Tell me, please Chrono." I flinched. She had aimed her question towards my chest, impelling my breath. I wanted to gasp, for air, or something else… that wasn't there.
I tenderly traced a claw down her forearm, where chill was still visible. A smirk crept across my lips and she shivered yet stayed stationary. Her gaze shifted nervously, innocently, across the floor. It was cute.
"You were always here, my child, alone with me, in my pain and sorrow…deep within the catacombs of my heart, dusty memories. I'm sorry but you're only… a dream." a horrified shock froze upon her face, and then suddenly the world around me came ripping away.
I moved swiftly forward 'Don't take this away from me again!' The words ripped from my throat yet it was too late. The girl, so bright and beautiful once again torn away from my conscious mind. I was trembling against the pavement again. The city around me was so drenched in icy haze, as it wrapped around my frame. That girl, I knew her. Somewhere within me she existed, possibly symbolizing my taunted warmth and innocent. Yet she also existed somewhere else, more physical than my imagination…
…I met her once, long ago…
Chapter 1: A Nameless Child
It was a cloudless day, the sun bearing down into my lifeless skin, as I walked near the hospital. She was running down the sidewalk, braids bouncing at her shoulders and face bowed and drenched. The light was illuminating those tears, creating shimmering streams across rosy flesh.
I didn't take great notice in the girl, guessing she was running to her parent, having tripped and fallen behind judging by her scrapped knee.
She then collided with my weary form, and to my great surprise, embraced my waist then buried her face into my tattered white shirt. I compassionately caressed her fair tresses, not knowing another way to react to such an openly warm gesture, and she wept. Finally raising her cherry tinted face to my gaze, she spoke while wiping tears on her sleeve.
"D…don't make me go back… I hate this place! I hate that room! It's too white, too hot, too cold, too scary, too alone…" Sapphires locked with my blazing depths, begging desperately, its silent voice crashing into my soul.
I answered. "Go back to…where?" her simple reply was a jabbing finger towards the hospital. I smiled understandingly. No child would want to be there, especially alone. But I also understood that she needed to be there for some reason.
"If I walk you back, and tell you a story, then will you go? It'll take a long time, I promise." Her brows furrowed for a moment, she then nodded and released my waist.
"Then let's go." And we began our journey back to her small, whitewashed prison.
I carefully wove my tale, elaborating in detail to take up time, so hours passed it seemed until we reached those double doors. I had finally finished my long narrative and she was utterly entranced. A small gasp fell her mouth.
"Wow… Thanks so much, - Uh… what's your name again?" I chuckled lightly.
"It's Chrono." I answered.
"Then, thanks Chrono! See you again some time?" She tilted her head and watched my face.
"Uh… I guess." She squealed happily. We said our goodbyes (and goodnights), then she turned her heel sharply and entered. Angry, yet worried voices quickly followed. I smiled at this as I walked away. This would not be my last visit, whether I consciously decided this or not. I'd find myself subconsciously strolling the sidewalk outside hospital doors almost daily, yearning for my little escapee to return to our 'spot'. She would quickly become my world.
Some four weeks full of visits later, the child's nurses had learned my name by heart and even offered me food and sometimes board in the waiting room as well. The in this entirety there was only a single time I recall that they threatened to kick me out.
It had been a long morning. With my child's encouragement I now worked at the coffee shop a few blocks away from the tall alcohol choked building, and the customers weren't always happy. One such customer stormed though our doors that morning. The man was stout, wide and middle aged with thinning hair. His suit stated his job; an office executive. Fuming he demanded a simple black coffee, and I brought him the order. He sipped it, puffed an angry breath from his lifeless face, and poured the rest down my front.
"It was too bitter" he stated and stalked out.
I hated those occasional customers, yet assured myself that the evening would be better. Somehow a small girl's words bounced though my head to look forward. To live in the present; that had already happened and there was nothing to do now. If I dwelled and became bitter as well I was only wasting my own life.
My footsteps pulsed with each beat of my heart as I approached the front of the giant white grave. For a brief moment, a chill raced though me, as if something was being foretold yet I ignored it. Eagerness blinded my senses as the shimmering entity floated in a buoyant performance. There was always a skip in her step. I liked that.
"Let's go somewhere special today, my child." I stated as we greeted one another.
"But… I can't be caught leaving the hospital grounds." She said innocently. I grinned.
"That's why we don't get caught." She turned her head, then a wide mischievous smile crept across her features.
"Got it." We were like two dangerous criminals, the clogs winding quickly in our minds. We slid from shadow to bush. Any methods would do to escape our own lives. People glazed cheerfully to us from time to time as we cleverly giggled to one another and whispered our 'secret plans'. As soon as we cleared the giant metal-plastic posts for the neon sign, we were free.
We reached the park, a short distance from the coffee shop. Her smile was surreal. She squeaked gleefully.
"I've never been to a park Chrono! It's so pretty. Let's go play!" she ran quickly ahead. I watched thoughtfully for a moment before chasing after the giggling youth. Something gave a gentle squeeze at the center of my chest, as an overflowing emotion swept though that area.
She was small, but indeed cleaver and quick. We wove though swings, down slides, across very high monkey bars, though tubes and loops, rainbows of paint crossing our vision, until though the blur of color I wrapped my arms around her fragile waist, and lifted her to the sky. She squirmed and whimpered, giggles caught between the two, in desperation to escape my clutches. They were failed attempts as I swung her though the sky, then falling into a blanket of grass burst into gasping laughter, her small feet jabbing into my abdomen. I finally loosened my grip and allowed her movement. She twisted in my embrace and pounded a fist into my chest. I smiled down at the girl, and her lips molded into a toothy grin.
"Ah, you won this time, but I'll get you back next round!" she chirped proudly. Placing a hand atop her shimmering crown I spoke softly.
"Almost got me this time, you know?" she giggled and rose crept into her cheeks as her small form was still comfortably collapsed against my own. Suddenly she sprang away, and stood over me, her face scrunched in thought.
"You know, you look better now." She stated in seriousness.
"Huh? I do?" I was lost.
"Look, you can really smile now. You laugh and grin, and frown and fuss. When I met you, I thought you might have been dead. It kind of scared me, but there was something… familiar about it all, so I knew you must have been special. Besides you looked so sad and alone. Now you're happy. I can see it written all over you. I'm glad that I knew…" she was calm and her smile was earnest. My mouth fell ajar, as she left me shaken by her words.
"Me too…"
We shrugged off the conversation and continued play, until it grew so dark that once the child ran into my legs, and smacked into the ground. After her pouting and a knock to my own head, we laid and talked.
"So, what do you want to grow up to be?
"Lots of things; I wanna explore every corner of the earth! Only, that doesn't make much sense cause the world is round… And after I do that, I wanna write all down, just like your stories… but before all that I want to be a doctor." Her eyes were half-lidded in recollection.
"Why a doctor miss?" my tone is almost comical.
"Did you know I had a little brother? He died last year… he was sick. The doctors couldn't fix him. But if I become a doctor then I'll make sure other kids like him won't die. I'll find a cure…" I smiled. She possessed a wisdom children should not, yet it was so becoming of her. And her heart, so pure and strong, was also so soft.
"You can find the cure when you explore, in the jungle or something, you know." I say almost forlornly. "Then you can write about your find in the book too." Her eyes fall shut as her smile spreads.
"Yeah… what about you, Chrono?" I stiffened a laugh.
"I'm already grown." A short chuckle escaped me.
"I know! I mean, when I'm grown. What will you be doing?" I was again studded. I never thought about it. It was always here and now for us, especially since I had no recollection of my past.
"I… will be here waiting. In our spot, waiting for you to come visit me again…" It hurt to speak those words, to face releasing my precious child into adult life.
"…" There was a dreadful silence that followed, until finally, she again broke it.
"Marry me?" her voice was an octave too high, becoming mousy.
"You don't wanna marry me …"
SMACK
The impact of her hand caused me to shift my stare to her features, resembling a very ripe tomato. Her cheeks were puffed out in frustration, and face cherry red.
"How do you know? M…maybe it's my new dream! I don't want you to leave me… Please, Chrono?" her pleading eyes bore into my own.
"Okay… for now. If it's what you want." Her face glowed, leaning towards my own as her eyes fluttered closed. Contact, our mouths brushed dryly together, sweet flesh against my own; a fleeting and innocent first kiss.
Yes… she was my world.
After recovering from my momentous embarrassment we walked quickly back. I wasn't sure how to take such action, and caught in a mist of my own thoughts did not realize how quickly my pace was. The flaxen haired angel sprinted in the ghosts of my steps, finally catching up after my own realization.
We were at the doors by then, and suddenly an explosion of coughs erupted from her chest. Nurses raced to take her behind those closed, hidden doors. Those same people complained endlessly of my carelessness and threatened if I pulled another stunt such as that would not be allowed to return.
Shortly after, on a day cloudless day much like the one of our meeting, as we traced those warn steps, she stopped in a sudden manner.
"Chrono, I'm scared…"
She gave me one final, loving gaze as her body crumbled into tremors running though her frame. I stooped beside of her, repeating over and over, in urgent whispers,
"What's wrong?" I grasped her shoulders and she wrapped her tiny arms around her middle, grasping herself in embrace. She then squeezed her lids shut, pressing her lips together until they began to fade blue. It was then I knew she was unable to speak.
Swiftly sweeping her from the ground, I cradled her tenderly, for the first and final time. My heavy steps, crashing into the ground, echoed in the void of my mind. Salty saturation obscured my vision, blurring just as my past has done for so very long.
We burst though those double doors, and I know everyone was staring and gasping at the scene but their words were muffled in a dream-like daze. I cried out, begging for assistance until my throat became dry and sore. Finally nurses and a doctor came. One nurse approached me, her mouth ajar with shock.
I recall how she forced my arms to pry away from her shuddering form as I hissed protectively. I could have carried her myself. I stood in shock; eternities could have came and passed between the rush of icy breeze pounding into my chest as they forced my child away and the second doors slamming together. My ears rang painfully, and I collided with the pale brick, sliding to the floor.
Icy… it was an icy hell as I pressed my back to the wall, hugging my knees. I huddled into a ball like form, trying to recover that heat I felt as I embraced my angel but to no avail. Deep within I knew no warmth could replace hers, and I desperately needed that comfort now as I sat crumpled upon marble. Where an overflowing tingle once existed now was cascaded by an unbearable ache. It had to be a nightmare, a manifest of what I feared the most as everything floated by emotionlessly.
When doctors emerged with dismayed faces, I was already submerged into unconsciousness, a black numbing void tugging at my soul. I had waited impatiently against the wall outside those doors, and was now lost within my own mind. I felt hands.
Someone was shaking my form, and it brought forth a sort of dizzy sickness inside the pit of my stomach. It was a kind elder woman I recognized as the child's bed nurse.
"Chrono, dear?" her voice was cracking, evident of her mourning though a frail smile plastered contrastingly to her face.
I did not respond, simply because the outside world did not concern me in that moment. I was alive inside a dream, with my child, and we were happy and she was still so alive. And she was better too… no more cough.
Finally a jagged poke torn away my perfect world; she jabbed me in the neck with a pen.
"C…Chrono… If you wish to see her again, follow me." I complied, half unaware of my surroundings, tracing the elderly woman's path in a painful trudge. Maybe I should tell them to put me in a bed too. Maybe… maybe I was dying as well…
We reached her room. No, it was not her room, not my child's room. Cheerful giggling memories bounced though my head just as her voice would bounce off her walls, yet this room was void of such bright optimisms.
This was not her room.
I sat in a metal-wired chair next to the bed. These rooms lacked such warmth. Only the girl's movie covers, carefully tapped to the walls, brought life to such a dead place. Wires and tubes were hooked up to her form now, and a machine was quietly beeping, keeping something in time. It was almost a ghostly chime. I gazed across her features, her flaxen mane and blazing azure depths, burning this into my mind. I felt as if I could never pull my features into a smile again, as if this sight was draining life and love from my body. Then something happened, that gave me the strength to smile each time I recollect the child, my child's fading form.
"Chrono, what's wrong? I've never seen such a dreadful face!" her voice was heavily strained; eyes laid shut. Yet still so full of life; it was nothing short of miraculous. My own voice choked back my words, tears still blanketing my features. Finally I forced my reply from my throat, strangled with pain.
"W…w…what should I look like..?" I couldn't help but ask, as it pounded though my head. Then she gave me her haunting reply.
"Like this," she smiled weakly, stretching her small hand to my face, then taking her fingers gently across my lips, pulled the corners into a smile. "Please… don't regret…me. Be happy… that we had time." her voice was but a whisper.
New waves of sorrow swam though my heart as her hand fell away, losing that precious contact. In desperation I called,
"Wait! What…was your name?" I waited, patiently for her answer. Suddenly a long beep was released from the strange machine beside of her. I felt like ripping it from its stand. The red line fell flat, just as her small arm had as it hung over the edge of the mattress. I wanted to scream.
And I did. I howled in grief as tremors tormented my own body. I felt myself loosing control. But gazing upon her pale corpse, I calmed. She still looked… alive. I was still shivering as I carefully placed her arm over her chest and rose. A nurse burst into the room, horror across her face. I must have scared many of the faculty but I couldn't care at this point.
"W…what's wrong Chrono! This is a hospital, people are trying to rest!" Furious, I grasped the young woman's shoulders and shook her violently.
"S…She's… not moving! Sh…she's dead damn it! D..d..don't ask me what the problem is!" her face became pallid as she glanced past me. "Where are her parents! I've never seen them. Not once!"
"She…doesn't have parents. She never received visitors until you magically appeared. It's sad, she was such a darling child." she spoke so calmly, though my entire world was crumbling though my fingers, like nothing was wrong. "Her papers said what was left of her belongings would be placed up for charity. Poor child, she didn't have much, brought in off of the streets, deathly ill. But she did receive mysterious videotapes from time to time. Never watched them… I don't know wh.." It was my turn to speak.
"W..why watch something, when you can be out there doing the stuff? Besides… she always liked my stories; only my stories." My eyes darkened in a possessive conceit. The nurse gave a sympathetic nod.
"Why don't you… take this stuff?" I was shocked by the nurse's words. Was she suggesting I steal them? "Don't worry. I won't tell. Besides, you'll get much more enjoyment out of these silly boxes than a child who'll just throw them away…" I only nodded, and in a thundering silence gathered my child's earthly possessions into boxes.
It only took one. Before leaving, I snuck a small kiss onto my nameless child's forehead. Her flesh still held warmth. Yes, she didn't watch television and dream of adventure.
Instead she made her own.
I could have discovered her name but it would have made things more painful. Her face alone haunts me. Though these recollections occur often, I still cry. Yet in her strength I find my will to life, without regrets, to wait, to smile though a veil of tears.
Just for her….
Author's note : Well there you are, love it or hate it. I know it's very confusing and abstract; the result of a very abstract idea. Anyway thanks for reading, please review. Constructive criticism is welcome