Piranha Chapter 3: Limbo, a rayman fanfic

Chapter Three: Limbo

Rayman was being dredged up, a drowned, waterlogged corpse, from the depths of silent, twisting chaos; surfacing to an awareness of something, something moving, touching his face – something lightly stroking his face.

Instinctively he took hold of it. A hand. A little hand. Sitting next to him, on the edge of the bed, was a female, a young woman, human-like, but about his own size. An unruly shock of tawny-dusty coloured hair, pale golden face, light gold-brown eyes searching at him. He peered up at her dazedly.

"Oh, you're awake," she said, gravely.

He pushed himself carefully into a sitting position – he was very weak – and looked at her. She looked back at him, her mild eyes attentive, yet seeming somehow to miss him. For some time they regarded each other in silence. She didn't seem to mind his not speaking. She was only waiting, passively; as though she would have accepted for him to talk, to swear, to yell, to hit her, with as much detachment as she now sat watching him gape at her like an idiot. He blinked.

"Who are you?" he said, with a cough or two to locate his voice.

"Oh," she said, "I was sent to make you feel better." And she started to pull off her ragged shirt over her head.

With a jolt, he grabbed her hands. "Don't do that," he gasped. Then he smiled wryly, letting her go. "Uh, you don't need to do that," he told her, starting over again. "That's not necessary."

She was looking bewildered. "But – the boss told me –"

He put a hand on her hand, shook his head. "No," he said.

His gaze took hold of hers very directly. Her light eyes widened. He gave her a small reassuring smile.

And abruptly the abyss sank its talons in him again, as though afraid he might climb out and get away. His body went cold. Tremulously, he lay down on his side, covering his face.

"Your boss," he whispered, shivering, "has a limited imagination."

She could not keep her eyes off that strange being as he lay, asleep or unconscious again, on the bed. He was much more ill than she had been told, frighteningly ill, and she could get in serious trouble if he didn't make it. But that wasn't what held her. It was the thought of his quiet voice, gentle, like nothing she had ever heard before ... no, like a very old, faintly stirring memory. And his eyes. That penetrating look he had given her – so brief, so weighed down with some awful sadness, and yet for all that addressed so intensely and powerfully to getting something through to her. As if she mattered.

He had touched her hand – not grabbing it, not taking possession of it, just contacting it as though it really belonged to her. As if she could own anything... He had looked at her with those eyes, dark, dark midnight blue, looking directly into her as though there were something there. As though he saw something. And something in her had stirred, strangely.

She kept seeing that look now every time she closed her eyes, it grabbed her unexpectedly when she was just about to stand up or turn around. She couldn't tell if the look frightened her or did something else. But she could not stop staring at him while he slept.

Returning to the bed from the cabin's tiny galley with a bronze goblet filled with wine-and-water, she found those eyes open and on her again. He didn't sit up.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, she held out the cup. "Drink some water," she said. He ignored the cup and only fastened his eyes on her.

And for an instant she could not move. As though some startling force had taken hold of her, as though she were seized and held still by an intensely powerful, yet gentle grip; she felt a momentary warmth surround her, a sort of radiant energy.

Then he closed his eyes and it was gone. He was just an odd-looking little body crumpled on the bed.

She hesitated. But he was still breathing. "Hey," she said, touching his hand. "You have to drink something."

Those eyes opened again. She didn't feel that warm rush this time, or perhaps only the faintest echo of it. "He sent you," he said in a low voice. "What did he tell you? I mean about me."

"Well... He said... he said you weren't used to the place yet... I should make you feel more at home. Help you relax."

Closing his eyes, he gave a small dry chuckle. "How touchingly considerate."

"It doesn't mean he wouldn't kill you," she said urgently. "Sooner or later he's going to think of you again, and then–"

"Oh, I know," he said, in that soft, sweet, slightly husky, dismissive voice that took such painful hold of her. Nothing must happen to this one, she couldn't bear it.

"Please," she said suddenly, surprising herself, "please, try to–"

He looked at her once more. Along with that weight of a sorrow so palpable she could feel it crushing down on her own back and shoulders, there was a glint of amusement. "What's that?" he said. "Will you get in trouble if I don't behave?"

Involuntarily her hands moved towards him but jerked back. "Maybe. I don't care. But you..."

She trailed off as her eyes caught a startling motion. His hands – big, strong-looking, independent, unattached to anything – one of them stirred, moved towards her freely as white bird, gently enveloped her two hands together. She gasped. The sleeves of his oversized robe were there, all right, but they were hanging empty. His hands moved with no relation to them at all. Caught by the strangeness of his eyes, she hadn't more than glanced at the rest of him till now.

He sat up slowly, holding onto her hands, his eyes holding her gaze. Again she felt that sense of actual warmth, like an energy beam, a focus on her so intense, so penetrating that it stopped her moving, almost stopped her breathing. She was suspended in an aura, as though some magical force had lifted her, as though she was floating, held in a glow that was forceful, intensely penetrating and analytical ... and almost unbearably suffused with kindness.

After a moment, he lowered his eyes. She managed to take in a breath. There was an odd, crooked little smile on his face. He squeezed her hands a little and let her go. "You know," he said, "You know, I really think you're just what you seem to be."

She shook off a dizziness threatening to land her on the floor and picked up the goblet. She moved it close to him as though to help him drink. "Can you–can you drink a little? You haven't eaten in a long time. Aren't you hungry?"

He quivered suddenly. A hint of tears showed in the corners of his eyes. He turned to lie down, facing away from her. "Oh, god," he whispered, very low, "Oh, my god... and in this place."

"What?" she said.

He gave a choked little sound that was half a laugh. "Kindness. Of all things."

She shook her head. "What do you mean?" She reached out a small rough hand to touch the back of his head, that wiry, springy blond hair, that incomprehensible anguish.

But he turned back towards her again, and her hand stopped involuntarily.

He said, very quietly, "Thank you for coming by. I was – I was – well, anyway. Thank you." Closing his eyes – which instantly let his deep fatigue show through – he added, "Tell your boss that... I'll be able to get up... soon."

She swallowed. "Are you saying – you want me to go?"

He looked at her sharply. "Doesn't he want a report?"

She put her hands, still holding the water goblet, together in her lap, looked down into the liquid inside. "If–if you don't like me–"

His eyes were growing perplexed. "Don't like you?"

"Then he'll–he'll send someone else, maybe."

"What do you mean?"

"He gave me to you."

Slowly, evidently with some difficulty, he sat up again. He only looked at her in silence, very intently, for quite a long time, until she wanted desperately to hide. She couldn't understand the look on his face, like sadness, or pain, but not exactly either. At last he put out a hand and touched her shoulder. "That son of a – Are you even a grownup? How old are you?"

"What?" A worried look came into her face.

"How old are you? Don't you know how old you are? Your age? How many years you've lived? ... Do you have any idea what I'm talking about?"

She stared at him in utter incomprehension. He abandoned the subject. With a tired smile, he said, "Well, so – you'd get in trouble, wouldn't you, if I didn't want you to stay."

She held out the goblet to him. "Aren't you thirsty?"

He sighed. Leaning forward, he took her hand, removing the goblet and putting it on a small bedside table. He held the hand, looking at it closely as if he'd never seen one before, pressing it softly, feeling its roughness, studying its broken nails and grime. Motionless, as though under a spell, she submitted.

"Have you... have you ever been in one of those – one of those grey boxes?" he whispered to her.

She gasped. "You mean the torture cells? Oh, no. No one ever–"

He put up a hand to quiet her. "The people in them – how long do they stay in there?"

She looked at him blankly. "Forever, of course."

His eyes squeezed shut, and he slumped back. His face was pale, drained. A sense of oppression she had been starting to feel, as if the very air in the room were trembling with pain and misery, grew heavier, thicker, the already dim light in the room seemed to darken. His body twisted a little on the bed.

"Oh, god," he whispered, "Oh, god, if I could only be sure if what I did was right, or wrong... If only I could know."

"What you did? What did you do?" she ventured, timidly.

And it was if an avalanche of burning black rain cascaded from nowhere, flooding the room in an instant. Her breath halted, her body went stiff with shock, and a sensation of horror and anguish swept her helplessly away to drown in a torrent that drained into a vast well in whose bottomless depths glowed two blue-black eyes...

His hand was gripping her arm, his face was close to hers, the eyes were his eyes, peering at her anxiously. She jerked away, almost falling off the bed, and covered her face. He swallowed. "I'm so sorry," he whispered, "That shouldn't have hit you." Gently, he took hold of her arm again; she gave a frightened little gasp that made him jerk, too, as though stabbed.

He didn't let go of her, however. He moved a little closer beside her; he took her head and gently pulled it to his chest, so that she was lying stiffly against him. She didn't know how to resist, though she kept her hands tightly over her face. Slowly, without a word, as she listened numbly to the sounds of his breathing, he put a hand on her forehead, held it there; then began to stroke her forehead very lightly, pushing back her hair, slowly, soothingly.

And coming from somewhere, there was that same strange sensation that she had felt the first time she looked into his eyes – a directness, a depth of concentration that was the most uncompromisingly intimate contact she had ever known; and yet, at the same time, there was a quality of detachment, of calm remoteness, that spoke to her and yet asked nothing, that touched her but left her completely free; an emotional quality that was as different as possible from anything she had ever experienced from any other being, male, female, or robot.

Her hands came little by little away from her face, but otherwise she held still, her eyes closed, breathing in gasps. As her sense of fear and oppression waned, something else was growing. It wasn't fear she felt now. It was something she couldn't begin to express. It was like being just born. It was like a mother cat licking life into a new kitten, it was like being created, a soul being breathed into a clay model, something suffusing her that she could not name, could not grasp; but which melted her gradually into a new being, a new shape, new uncomprehended tears.

When she was no longer crying, when she was calm, he pressed his hands gently over her eyes for a moment – somehow conveying a world of kindness with the gesture – and laid her down on the bed. She remained there, silent, a few tears still leaking from her shut eyes, breathing slowly, unable to move, unable even to locate where she physically was. But there was no distress in her.

And Rayman sat there beside her for a while, moving his hands, putting them together, looking at them absently; glancing at the small, slender alien form beside him; looking around the room; taking the occasional deep breath.

For once, not drowning in black horror every time he turned his head. He took another breath. He could breathe. He moved his body a little. He could move. The – abyss held back its claws.

Slowly, he lay down a little apart from her. He closed his eyes. The thick black wave of anguish didn't surge to overwhelm him. He inhaled, shakily.

It was still there, the anguish, the horror. But it stayed down in its dark glutinous pool, only lapping at his feet.

There was something living, breathing beside him. Something alive and – innocent. Tears burned in his eyes for just a moment. He took a long breath. Something innocent.

Drifting in a half-hypnotic doze, she could not understand what had gone on between them, what might still be going on; but out of all her bewilderment, one certainty coalesced: Nothing must happen to this one. He was not like any other, in any way. She must not let anything happen.

If he didn't want her to take her clothes off, if he didn't want to do all those things men did, that didn't matter. It was because he was different, he would want different things. She would have to find out what he did want, and make sure he got it, so he would let her stay.

She sidled a little closer to him. He seemed to be sleeping. His body was very warm. She let her back inch up to touch his rounded back, just barely, and took a deep breath, unnerved by her own daring.

Silently – as though careful not to wake the rest of him – one of his hands came over to press her lightly on the shoulder, then returned to its place.

Nothing in her life had ever touched her with such calm. Again she felt a clench of determination: She must never lose this one.

Exhausted with emotions she could not name, she sank the rest of the way into sleep.

Rayman, too – after contemplating with shut eyes the startling detours of his fate in the last few days – finally yielded to the first sleep that, since coming out of the box, was able to give him any rest.

[End of chapter]