Written in school computer terminal after unintentionally cutting a class.
Very random. As always, please review.
Redemption.
† † †
It was just an accident. Things like this happen everyday, although it had never happened to him before.
He supposed it could have been worse, Both of them could be dead.
He stared at the remnants of his car, thoroughly crumpled against the wall of rock and marveled for just a moment how he managed to survive without a scratch.
The other guy wasn't so lucky.
They both had been speeding. Schuldich had come from a bar in town and had downed more brandy than he had intended. He knew he shouldn't have driven back to his flat but stubborn by nature, he didn't mind risking it.
It was a little dark out, some of the streetlights had been broken by gangs and hormone-enraged kids and those that did work cast but a dim glimmer onto the gloomy highway.
He had felt the other man's thoughts just a split second before he even saw him.
He felt the shards of agony and confusion as well as the sharp pangs of sorrowful regret. He heard a name spoken from the depths of the subconscious and he knew that the person to whom it belonged died not long before.
The sharp turn in the road seemed to stretch into eternity, but he knew it was just a moment. Suddenly he saw the headlights of the motorcycle and swerved, pulling the wheel as hard as he could to the right.
The motorcycle swerved and skidded, jumping sparks flashed on the pavement as the screech of protesting metal hurled itself into the cold air.
It was a little too late, the wheels already ate up the front of the motorcycle just as that last moment send his vehicle careening against the merciless wall.
He heard the crash almost as much as he felt it. The jolt was unbelievable, as if a force was pulling him apart from his seat. A lucid thought told him that his seatbelt had just saved his life, and then the sharp inhale of air hissed as the airbag inflated and rammed itself into his face.
He just sat there, unable to move, his mind still careening from the impact of the blow. He knew his car was well beyond salvation, and his muscles were screaming bloody death but he knew that the guy on the motorcycle was hell worse off.
The guy might actually be dead. He hadn't heard a single word from him since the moment of the crash.
The human in Schuldich wished that the guy wasn't dead. Maybe he was only unconscious, he hoped.
It seemed like a lifetime until he heard the wailing of the sirens in the distance.
Extracting him from the wreck took almost an hour, but they lifted the whole car first to disengage the battered body underneath.
The biker was a mess. He could see the mangled body through the shards and pieces of his broken windshield.
Legs hung limply in thick jeans, masses of blood coloring and staining the tattered material and Schuldich knew that the bones there had been crushed.
He felt sadness, remorse. He didn't mind killing if he meant to do it. He usually had some motivation or another for his kills... but this was so... out of the blue. The man had done nothing against him or his employer and yet here he was, half dead because Schuldich had stubbornly decided to drive home drunk.
Through the cracked helmet and the broken visor, he saw a youthful face smattered cruelly with blood.
Guilt made his stomach float.
Miraculously, he wasn't as damaged as he felt. He was more lucid now, more sober than he had ever been and the pain was unbelievable but the doctors said that he just had a minor concussion from a hairline fracture and he needed to stay a few more hours for the tests.
The other man was in the ICU, he was told, just out of surgery.
He owed it to him to show up. The man would probably hate him for life- but hell, he was used to that. Factions might even have formed to make sure he and his teammates would go down.
He was used to that.
The nurses didn't want to let him through, but he said that he was the owner of the car in the accident. And a little telepathic suggestion didn't hurt either.
They gave him sympathetic glances while he heard spiteful thoughts in their heads about how he killed the boy. How the boy had been too young. How he had been drunk.
He really couldn't blame them. All of it was true and he knew it. Otherwise, he wouldn't be swimming the endless pit of guilt, now would he?
He took a step forward and brushed past the two nurses, leaving them to think their nasty-sympathetic thoughts to themselves.
He supposed he already expected what he was going to see. He had seen enough of blood and gore in his life to make it an everyday, mundane thing. It was stupid, really, how he couldn't gather the courage to face his unwitting victim.
Then again, he had done many stupid things in his life.
He stepped forward and saw the body on the white bed. Millions of machines seemed to beep and whir their witness of the young man's struggle for survival.
He heard the rhythmic woosh as air rushed in and out of semi-collapsed lungs.
He expected what to see but he didn't expect who to see.
He didn't expect to see him there.
He didn't expect this could ever happen to him outside of a mission.
But there he was, the boy that the Schwarz knew as Siberian, broken.
He really should be glad, he thought to himself. They had been trying to kill those WeiB people anyway and now one was out of their hair, perhaps for good.
But it didn't stop the guilt that had been washing over him since the start of the ordeal.
He could hear thoughts stumbling into the surface of lucidity.
Ken Hidaka was awakening.
The eyes fluttered open, surrounded by hues of different colors. The man was barely alive, anchored only by machines that kept him breathing.
He saw no recognition in the watery orbs, only confusion and physical pain dulled by countless drugs.
He neared the bed, tentatively, almost shyly, trying to rein the self-reproach that threatened to make him run.
He never expected to encounter with Siberian this way. Not in a million years.
But here he was, standing over his bed, offering an arm.
He didn't know why, but he saw Ken try his damnedest to move his limbs.
Under the thin white blanket, there was nothing.
And then he knew, they had amputated both his legs.
Ken knew it too.
And a sharp wail tore through the room, reverberating through every nook and niche. It was a wail far worse than the dying throes of any creature.
It was the sort of grief that knew no comfort. It was the sort of grief who recognized no man or woman, no friend or enemy, no love or hate. It was the sort of grief that threatened to blow one's heart apart until nothing was left but nerves and shattered pieces of one's soul
Schuldich had never known such grief.
And it engulfed him, encompassing him in a wall of sea-salt agony. He could feel the terror, the absolute horror, the maddening anguish.
All he could do was grit his teeth and endure the clawed fingers that dug into his skin, he had caused this immeasurable pain.
He was the cause.
Fate really knew how to play twisted games.