So here we have our obligatory 'sick fic/chapter' XD This entire fic is just basically me begging Rinko to go to sleep and also refusing to let her :D
And hey, look, two updates in the same month again! XD (On the flipside, my other SAO fic is on the back burner, but we won't think too hard about that :))
(The title 'ice can't fly' is from the 2015 Pokemon Christmas Medley by GlitchxCity and Trickywi)
Rinko supposes she can be mildly grateful for the fact that she finally gets hit with the flu after those two months of chaos. On the other hand, she was finally making an honest effort at going back to a somewhat healthy sleep schedule, damn it.
Muffling coughs in her pillow, she rolls over, shivering despite having dragged every spare blanket out of the closet into a heap on top of the covers. With a quiet, hoarse sigh, she reaches for the cup next to her bed, only to groan and then burst out coughing again when she realizes there's nothing left in it.
Since she's not going to get much sleep with her throat feeling like it's on fire, she shuffles out of bed, dragging some blankets and herself to the kitchen, and nearly blinds herself with the light. Each breath rattling in her chest, she reaches for the sink and braces her arms against the edge while the cup fills, fighting the urge to nod off.
Without warning, she sneezes, much to the despair of her sore throat, and flinches as the cup slips from her grasp and CLANGs loudly in the sink. Thoroughly done, she slaps a hand to her forehead and sighs.
"I'd almost forgotten how incapacitated you are when you're sick."
Too tired to do much else, Rinko just gives her housemate a flat look, and he chuckles, sidling into the kitchen, to her alarm.
"Hey, no," she says quickly, wincing as her throat screams at her in protest, "you stay away from me. I can afford to get sick, but you're weak enough as it is."
Rinko might've spared a moment to mentally berate herself for worrying about him, of all people, if not for his reaction.
Akihiko blinks, faltering in his approach. His gaze flickers away, and for a spilt second, she thinks she sees something akin to...disappointment? He did always take an uncharacteristic amount of pleasure in mother-henning her when she got sick in the past, as if relishing the fact that he could boss her around and make her take care of herself instead of constantly being on the receiving end of such treatment from her.
But then he keeps approaching, and she shuffles back a few steps; her protests die in her aching throat as she tries to hold back more coughing. With a tiny lopsided smile and a bone thin hand, he carefully brushes some sweaty strands of hair out of her face before he almost playfully tugs one of the blankets from her shoulders up over her head like a hood, eliciting a startled squeak—well, what would've been a squeak if she still had a fully functioning voice.
"Go back to sleep," she hears him say as the tap runs; when she lifts the blanket up from over her eyes, he's handing the cup, now full, to her. "I'll make enough food to freeze for until you recover."
She takes a small sip, the lukewarm liquid soothing her throat marginally.
"Why?" she finally rasps, staring at her wavering reflection in the water.
She can't figure out which question she's supposed to be asking—why does he still care about her? Does he care? Is he doing this for her, or did she just happen to provide him with a way to entertain himself?
Moving slowly but methodically, he opens the cabinets, taking out cookware and tools.
"I miss cooking," he answers lightly, using the counter for support as he turns away to shuffle to the mini fridge.
She should just stop learning to get her hopes up, but she doubts she can be taught new tricks at this point.
"Thanks," she whispers anyways.
It's the first time she's said that word to him in months, she realizes. After all, what did she have to thank him for when he took her entire world away like he did?
Akihiko glances at her. He doesn't say 'you're welcome', just smiles. It's an empty smile, and she wonders if she is a fool to hope that she can find something in nothing.
o0o0o
Rinko spends the next week or so in bed, either sleeping off the illness or doing whatever remote work that she can do while minimizing the number of times she needs to physically move from her bed—rather, just minimizing movement in general, really. Every day that it snows, she contemplates shovelling some of it out of the way of her car, then rolls over and goes back to sleep, resigning herself to regretting her decisions later, just like she always does.
But strange things happen. Sometimes, she wakes up tucked snugly into the covers, her laptop plugged into the charger and notes organized in a neat pile on the nightstand next to a cup of water, when she distinctly remembered falling asleep with her face glued to the keyboard after she ran out of coffee, papers strewn around her pillow. Or she'll stumble into the kitchen at half past eleven when she gets too hungry to stay in bed, and breakfast will be waiting to be microwaved, fresh coffee brewing in the machine.
It's almost a little too familiar. If she didn't know better, she'd think these instances were hallucinations, or some hyper realistic dreams. But it's real—every time she enters the kitchen to find coffee and breakfast, he's still missing.
Meanwhile, her time perception is falling further and further off the track, right along with her already nonexistent sleep schedule, with every passing day that she stays inside. Taking care of her comatose housemate is all that's left of any sort of schedule she may have once had. Some days, it's the only thing that can get her out of bed.
On snowstorm days, the wind rattles the windowpanes and she can barely see the outside world, let alone dredge up the energy to go much further than the coffee machine in the kitchen. During a particularly dark morning, she vaguely remembers waking up to the faintest amount of light coming in through the window before rolling over, and then the next thing she knew, it was four in the afternoon. With her sickness preventing her from actually going to work, she doesn't even have that to keep her accountable.
Besides, everything looks the same up here. The ground is always blindingly white, the forest always dark and shadowed. If she goes too long without looking at a clock, sometimes she can convince herself she's living in some sort of eternal loop, the rest of the world frozen in time like a broken video tape.
Her illness is starting to clear up when she realizes she literally hasn't spoken to anyone in over a week, which has got to be a new all time low. And with her throat feeling like a truck ran over it in the past few days, she hasn't even been talking to herself. Even her elusive housemate seems to have taken her advice for once, avoiding coming near her, at least while she's awake, and during the times that she goes to change his IV or whatnot, he's always asleep. She hasn't heard a human voice in over a week that didn't belong to some random sitcom she's been streaming on her laptop.
It's just been her in her little bubble. Things get in, not much gets out, but since when did she ever try to make herself heard?
After some number of days, it's the trash cans being full to the brim that finally forces her to emerge from hibernation and into the outside world. With a sigh, she crams the empty IV saline bag into the overflowing bin as best she can, bundles up, and makes her way to the door.
Cold hits her like a physical force when she finally shoulders open the door; she stumbles back a step, shivering as she can suddenly see her breath in front of her. Freezing air stings and nips at the insides of her lungs, and she muffles her coughs as she steps outside. Her toes, already starting to go numb, curl in her boots as she squints at the front yard, as brilliantly, blindingly white as always.
Quickly, she shuts the door behind her to keep the heat inside for Akihiko, and she takes a few steps onto the porch, reaching out to knock off a few icicles hanging from underneath the railing. They make oddly pleasant noises as they snap. Above her, under the lip of the overhang, larger icicles stand watch.
In a way, she'd expected this. When she first realized that she would never be able to take his life nor hand it over to anyone else, she knew she would be completely alone. And in a way, it's not...bad, objectively, even if it leaves her alone with nothing but her own thoughts for probably longer than is good for her.
Out here, everything substantial seems to just fall away. Given enough of that thing that people call 'time', that very thing itself starts to become little more than an idea, simplified down to occasionally checking calendar dates and the amount of sunlight coming in through the window. Outside of her job, and taking care of her roommate, there's little else that she has to do on a regular basis. Even going grocery shopping is something she only does about once a month these days.
And, she adds to herself with a wry grimace, she doesn't even really have any friends left that she can hang out with anymore, and although most of the people at her new job are perfectly nice, she hasn't had the will to try and befriend any of them. They've invited her out a few times, but for reasons both personal and practical, she's turned them down.
Part of her wants to say something out loud, anything, just to hear a real human voice again. But now, standing out here, it seems almost a crime to break the fragile silence of this frozen winterscape. Instead, she settles for simply listening to her own breathing, rhythmic with a slight leftover rasp, and closes her tired eyes, letting the afterimages of the snow dance under her eyelids. Even after having done little else but sleep for so long, it feels as though she could drift off again standing here.
It's funny—usually, it's excessive social interaction with people she doesn't want to interact with that drains her like nothing else does. These days, it's just about the opposite.
I'm lonely.
She's always been an introvert, which still very much holds true. Usually books are far more interesting than the company of most of the people around her. But she had friends, good friends, that she didn't know she was taking for granted until she could no longer keep their company in good conscience. Ultimately, everyone needs a hand to hold sometimes.
Almost against her will, she turns to look back at the door leading inside, twisting her fingers together slowly in melancholy. Hand-holding was about as much physical affection as either of them was willing to show when they were in public, but god, she misses being able to reach over for him when she's lost in thought at work, or walking down the sidewalk, or taking a quiet coffee break, or driving on the way home.
Does he miss it too?
Her breath steams in ragged puffs as she struggles to hold back tears all of a sudden. She knows what it all meant—means—to her, knows that her feelings can never change, nor will her memories ever fade, but part of her will always want to know what it meant to him, even if the answer would break her heart.
o0o0o
As the weeks crawl by, Rinko has grown into the dichotomy of living in an endless winter in the mountains while spring is in full swing down in the rest of the world. It stopped snowing so heavily a while ago, but the cold still refuses to weaken its grasp.
That is, until she walks outside one day and her foot lands in a puddle on the edge of the porch.
For a moment, she freezes there mid-step at the sound of the splash. Her brain doesn't quite process the significance of that tiny sound, and she stands there, wondering why she's still standing there, and why she has this strange feeling that she's supposed to know something-
Plink.
Like a startled cat, she jumps at the feeling of an ice cold droplet hitting her head, running down into her shirt. With a violent shiver, she hops down the single step and whirls around, staring at the puddle on the ground for another second, and then up.
The icicles are melting.
In her periphery, a branch sagging with the weight of snow suddenly dumps its load onto the ground with a quiet fwump, and birds take off in fright.
It's the thaw. An incredulous laugh escapes her in a soft breath.
Winter is finally ending.
Oh wow, look, I wrote an ending that's mildly uplifting! *surprised Pikachu face*
Also, if anyone's heard Unlasting, which I think is the ED for the War of Underworld arc of Alicization, I feel like the meaning of the lyrics suits Rinko and Kayaba just as much as Alice and Kirito, maybe even more so. Every single line just *chef's kiss* fits them SO WELL.