Fall Apart
By xannychan
Disclaimer: Beyblade does not belong to me.
Short A/N: After a ridiculously long hiatus, here's your third chapter. I had a hard time trying to figure out what to do with this story, since this had originally begun as a one-shot; this project you're reading here is largely experimental. If you have any ideas, feel free to review or PM me whenever.
Warnings: One-sided shounen-ai, angst, and such things follow.
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Hospital lights have a way of slanting into your eyes, white-hot and cold at the same time. And the people have a way of smiling at you, that slight tilt of their heads that say that they're quite sorry you're sick in the head when they see the bandages running all the way around your torso, blood-stained and stiff. And the cold has a way of crawling up your broken legs through the itch of plaster and layers of white sheets too much like a shroud around a dead body.
The loneliness has a way of sliding into your bones and through your blood, like amber eyes asking you, why? Or like blond hair that's been unwashed for days, or falling asleep in your red sneakers, or glasses flashing in front of laptops for days on end.
Black Dranzer smiles, and Kai can feel it, feel her hand against his cheek, stroking his face, perhaps in twisted affection and sick control and feeling like a slap, like a whip striking the skin that's gotten a little sickly as the days stretched into weeks.
Broken hope has a way of scarring you, like the bruises that bloom everywhere on your skin.
Kai stares at the white tiles, unable to answer their questions, the shadow by the window blocking his view of the sunrise.
Still no one understands the reasons in his eyes, the cloudiness that he doesn't realize are tears until they're streaming down his face.
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For the first week while he was in the Intensive Care Unit, lost in unconsciousness, they had stayed by his bedside. At least, Rei had. Takao left every once in a while for food and to swallow his nightmares. Max slid out the door when he tried to gulp back his tears. Kenny drifted in and out, researching this and that and burying his face into his hands. But Rei, Rei had stayed right there, watching, waiting, wishing.
He's seen it coming, Rei accuses himself. He should have been ready, should have been there and he wishes more than anything that he could have been a better friend.
A friend that Kai would never have let him be, he adds unconsciously. At this, his mind jars, skids to a halt.
He has a strange light in his eyes when he looks at you, the reasonable side of him says. A strange light that you've never wanted to understand, because there's something in there that scares you…
His mind keeps reeling. The possibilities, the possibilities, the things he knows are there scare him shitless.
They visit once a week now that he's awake and being guarded. They have gotten a little more forceful with each visit, demanding why? And Kai never answers, just stares.
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Rei notices, for the first time, that the hospital lights make Kai look like a ghost.
He turns out the lights as he leaves, but doesn't turn around. He doesn't know that, in the dark, Kai looks like man trapped in a nightmare of black fire and unspoken desires.