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Insomnia
By The Eternity Dragon
Disclaimer: …..o..0;
Chapter eleven
Internal Abhorrence
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Had you seen Tala Valkov walking down the street on that particular clear August evening, you would have had the distinct impression of a person in a very bad mood.
The fact was, he was in a bad mood, he was scowling beneath the black leather of his jacket as he kicked a loose stone across the curb and headed down another corner.
The flow of traffic ebbed past, and the wide black walls of the Legacy building arched into view. A black sub drummed across the broad gravel gateway, stopping at the security gate, the window slipping down to show a young man with deep blue eyes and a frowning disposition.
Tyson…that was the last person on earth he wanted to be reminded of now- Tyson and that…that insipid ooey gooey mushy romantic, abhorrent, sickening air that…
He threw his hands up in the air lost for words as the car rolled past, he saw his reflection flash in the rear view mirror and resisted the temptation to make very rude hand signals.
Justine had been perfectly right of course…he was jealous, disgustingly so. Jealous of the way Tyson made Kai smile, laugh, and those looks.
Tala was filled with the overwhelming urge to retch, he felt as if a huge black cloud was sitting directly over his head, bubbling ominously in dark swaths, a few lightening bolts zipping here and there ready to strike at unsuspecting passers by.
He was not in anyway prepared to have his patience tried he thought as he swung through the revolving lobby doors.
He'd go visit Kai and get it over with- and then….
And then what? Do what exactly? Leave him, he stopped, half confused, almost dazed in the middle of the black marble floor- a small portly man carrying a stack of papers bumped into his rigid back and was lost in a shower of white sheets.
Tala didn't notice.
What would he do?
Could he leave Kai?
The answer that came to mind without thinking was no, and yet at the same time logic almost dictated him as a lost necessity. He wasn't needed by Kai at all- he was like an extra hand now- surely if Tyson had…had come back that would mean that Kai would re-unite with the rest of the Blade Breakers. That would mean a string of well wishers and supporters.
That loud mouthed girl for one, and the spectacled boy, the blonde haired kid and Rei, and that awful little squip of a monkey Daichi. What did that mean- to Kai? To him?
Someone tapped him firmly on the shoulder, Tala jumped, looking round bemused as if suddenly becoming acutely aware of his surroundings.
The receptionist was looking at him from beneath her thin brows, her dark eyes seeming to pierce his skull, "Don't just stand there gawping!" she said briskly, prodding him forwards,
"I've had Justine Moore on the phone for the last half and hour asking where the hell you where!"
Tala opened his mouth, with some of the apparent tact of a fish wondering how to talk.
"She's up in the clinical room, past the MRI machine." the receptionist told him tartly, her long red nails clicking, "I suggest you get a move on."
Tala took the long way up, avoiding the elevator and climbing turrets of spiralling stairs that seemed to ascend forever. His mind had gone painfully numb, and his feet every time they hit the hard stone of the steps echoed emptily up into the ceiling, falling down from the walls and collapsing onto him.
He sat down on the top step beside a hallway door and placed his head on his knees, allowing his thoughts to corkscrew into a place of some balance, so coherent thought, faces seemingly swam up in his vision, all laughing, all smiling at him. Kai with that very peaceful look on his face, sleeping whilst Tyson half dozing held his hand, his baseball cap half falling down his face.
A little knot of ice had formed down at the bottom of Tala's gut; and he looked down the steep flight before him, and wondered if he just ought to jump now.
There was a clack of high heels somewhere behind him, Tala looked round and then realised a too late as the door swung open and collided with the back of his head. He went toppling forwards, and explosion of white stars showering before his eyes and a hot wrenching pain went flying through his head.
"What are you doing here you idiot!" Justine Moore asked with perplexed annoyance, her hands on her hips, "I told you not to leave!"
"I just," Tala began, blinking salty tears of pain out of his eyes, but she cut in before he could finish.
"Tala, are you crying?"
"I AM NOT!" Tala shouted very loudly and standing straight up, the world spinning unpleasantly in multicoloured bubbles.
"Oh, I should have been more considerate, I forgot in all the rush I'm sorry, do you want a tissue?"
The apparent concern in her voice made matters even worse, he flapped her hands away scowling ferociously, "I do not want your god damned tissue!" he snarled, "I'm FINE alright, just fine!"
There was a long pause, in which Justine assessed him critically from under her dark blonde lashes.
"I want you to talk to Kai." she said opening the door to the hallway and walking off in the opposite direction towards the MRI room.
"No!" Tala shouted after her, but she took no notice, she merely swung her long blonde her and clipped down the dark corridor and the door swung shut.
"Justine no!" he repeated loudly coming after her, "I don't want to talk to Kai with….with Tyson there!
"Tyson's not there at the moment." Justine told him curtly, sticking her head out from another dark doorway, "he's getting some tests done so I can assess how to improve the Meds I'm giving Kai."
"How will I help then?" Tala barked angrily at her, his hands firmly entrenched in his pockets as he kicked the door open.
"I want you to talk to him, see how he is," she raised her brows at Tala's non-plussed expression, her lips pursed, "Consolidate him you eegit!"
Tala's mouth moved like a fish again, for some reason he was very uncomfortable with the idea of confronting Kai.
"I don't want to." he put bluntly, "I think I might upset him. Besides you said he was fine. "
Justine narrowed her eyes, "Have you ever looked up the word 'denial' in a dictionary Tala? There's a very handsome picture of you there."
Tala felt his temple bubble ominously, "Yeah well, it-it gets me though things all right!"
"Besides, why can't Tyson?"
"Because, Tyson doesn't- well he doesn't know how to look for signs of, you know." There was a slight darkness in Justine's eyes that glittered for a moment, under the flickering light Tala noticed for the first time how very pale she looked, almost ethereal, her glassy eyes seemingly peering right down into his soul.
"He collapsed Tala, and I want to know why, I want to know if he's- if he's getting worse, like you did." her voice trailed off.
The silence spiralled horribly.
"Fine." Tala muttered, staring at his shoes, "I'll go, but as soon as Tyson comes in I'm off, do you hear?" he stuck out his tongue and turned around, his eyes glancing over the dark panelled room 'MRI' room the sign read.
"Hey how come you don't stick me in there anymore?" he asked, "you used to all the time when I was a kid."
"You your common sense Valkov!" Justine snapped, rolling her eyes and clipping out of the room and down the corridor, "The MRI machine is a huge magnet, if I did that your internal organs would be sticking to the roof of it."
She grinned at the expression on his face, "Outside your body of course."
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"Tala?" Kai said in some surprise getting up from the windowsill on which he had been sitting, "Where did you go? You've been gone for hours."
Tala stood by the door, his fingers lingering on the handle, his expression carefully closed, as he shut it behind him.
"I needed to do…stuff." he told his lavender eyed friend ambiguously, he strode to the opposite side of the room and sat in the chair furthest away from Kai, and didn't look at him, suddenly becoming avidly interested with the fan on the ceiling.
Hiwatari blinked at him, the skin on his hands was marred slightly from where he had been clenching his fists, grooves cutting into the pale skin, bright and scarlet.
"I told Tyson, you know- well, I told him…most of it."
His words fell into a discontented atmosphere, "I didn't tell him that it was…Justine, you know. I didn't tell him that because I didn't think he'd understand that it's different now."
Tala gave a very short bark of a laugh, still looking up at the fan, his grey eyes stormy.
"No, I'm sure he'd understand why she had a good old poke inside our brains!" he snapped sounding more aggressive than he meant to, "Good old Boris eh? Always happy to produce break throughs in the scientific field, just don't expect him to pick up the pieces."
Kai didn't say anything, his hands where on the sill behind him, his beautiful slanted eyes looking at Tala without anger, without fear, without sadness, without even that wall of coldness that he had become very used to.
It made him infuriatingly angry, beyond words in fact, not angry at Kai however, but with himself, with himself for even feeling like this. For the audacity to…hate this happiness even when he tried to convince himself that is what he wanted. That is why he had called Tyson for this- this irrefutable happiness.
"Tala- it was a mistake, that's all, it just went so badly wrong." there was an even solidarity in his tone that made Tala's stomach flip over.
"Oh yeah, sure, that's why I nearly died! A mistake, yeah right, hey Justine get out of my temporal lobe! That's why nearly all of my internal organs shut down, why I thought I was going mad, why I heard all those voices! It was all a mistake."
He was shouting now, on his feet, his hands shaking, shouting at the top of his voice,
"They had to stick me back together again, I'm not even fully human Kai! They- re-animated me, like some sort of pet project at the abbey, some sort of plaything Boris could- could toy around with, some half cyborg mutant kid without any parents. Yeah, it was all a mistake. And you, god knows, we can only be lucky now, maybe you'll just die and not have to go through the indignity that I went through!"
His composure was gone, he was breathing heavily, he wanted Kai to stop looking at him like that, like he was hurt, the way his eyes fell down as if he didn't know what he wanted to say…like he was vulnerable under all that.
"God screw you!" he snarled, kicking the chair halfway across the room where it clattered lying in a lump on the floor, "I liked you better when you where miserable!"
He marched over to the door, blinded by the perpetual whirlwind flying around inside of him, his fingers on the cold brass knob and then:
"I'm sorry."
Very quiet, almost beneath a whisper, but audible, there seemed to be shafts of ice moving through his stomach, his breath seemingly gone from his lungs.
Kai's hand touched the skin of his forearm where it seemed to burn into his skin.
"I'm selfish putting you through all of this, I'm so very selfish Tala, you don't know how much I've leant on you, how…fond of you I am."
Tala looked up at the ceiling again, not facing Kai, it had certainly become very difficult to breath, the fan swam oddly for some reason, and there was a lump constricting in his throat as he thought of the word 'fond'.
"I just don't think about how it effects you."
"No," he said quietly, "you don't know how it…." but he was unable to finish his sentence, his mind was still with the hand resting on his wrist.
"I thought maybe, you and I…"
"Kai," Tala asked, his eyes shut, "are you meeting the rest of them."
"The rest of who Tala?"
"The rest of…of the Blade Breakers?" he kept his voice quiet, without the strain he was feeling.
"Tyson mentioned something incoherently about it," Kai frowned as Tala stiffened.
"Why?"
"I have to go."
"Now? But you've been gone for hours, I wanted to ask you something."
Tala opened his eyes and looked steadily at the door knob, and repeated, "I have to go Kai."
"I don't understand…" But before Tala could open his mouth to say anything else the door was pulled open before him, Tyson stood, looking at them in surprise, half a burger clasped in his hand.
"Oh," he said Looking from Kai to Tala with his deep blue eyes, "Is this a bad time?"
"Oh just a little!" Kai snapped very sarcastically, "I thought you where going for tests."
"I was," Tyson snapped back indignantly, "I got hungry."
"You're a pig!"
"When I want your opinion Kai, I'll ask for it!" Tyson told him disdainfully.
"It's not an opinion Tyson, it's human observation."
Tala shrugged Kai's hand off and shouldered his way out of the room, Tyson stepping out of the way nimbly as he stormed past furious, making towards the elevator.
There was a shout from Kai, but Tala didn't look back, he ran off down the corridor and turned the corner, jabbing furiously at the panel of buttons.
The doors slid smoothly open and he was about to step inside when someone jogged up behind him, sticking his foot before the sliding door and preventing them from closing.
"Hey Tala," Tyson said, "don't be like that, come on back, I wanted to talk to you."
Tala turned and gave Tyson the look of the purest, deepest loathing.
The high shouldered youth took a step backwards, a sudden comprehension dawning in those bottomless eyes, his felicitous lips parted slightly, as if in shock.
"I don't think so, do you Tyson?" Tala said coldly, in low almost mocking tones, the doors began slide shut.
"Because I really quite despise you."
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A/N Sorry guys for making you wait! I've been reading all your wonderful reviews, thanks a lot for the helpful criticism and the erh…not so helpful criticism…I just wanted to explain to one very 'helpful' reviewer, that I don't in fact believe any of the Beyblade character cast is ahem 'gay' in that sense. I think a person can be in love with someone of the same sex without being 'gay', I happen to have a strong feeling that Kai is in fact bi- so I try to write him that way, (I hope it shows).
I really enjoy writing Insomnia- thank God I think I have a little more clarity in my work now, hopefully this chapter gave you obvious clues to what is going on. Oh god Tala…why do you write yourself so?
Long wait? Explanation? XD My laptop was stolen away from me by my 'loving' father and I have A levels next week (this is my break that I am sacrificing for you BE HAPPY!)
So I made them get a new computer for my writing, and now I'm sitting here writing this.
Enjoy because I write angst- and I love it too!
