That chapter may shock you a bit, but don't worry, remember that 'with Tenou nothing is what it seems to be.'
ENJOY THE CHAPTER ;)
The beast inside
29 April,
2008
Day 10Sitting on the kitchen table, she held her tea hot cup in her hands.
From the saloon came the sounds made by the tv, and spinning around she saw Hotaru who, laying on her stomach was staring intensely at her favourite tv program.
The tap of the recorder had just started to turn.
"Michiru Kaioh, 9:23pm 29th April 2008. Today, finally I understood. I saw that." Her voice trembled a bit, still shocked by the latest happenings. "Today I saw the illness inside Tenoh. Today I saw the beast which is capable of deleting all Haruka's psych in some seconds, changing him. I was what the war has made to this person. I thought they were overreacting, but this morning I saw the guy I thought to know disappear from my sight, to end up who knows where. Probably in Iraq, and in the devastation the battle caused not only in that country, but in the heads whom comes back from there on his own legs."
She swallowed some hot tea. Her hands lightly shaking. "Right now I know that this day had been a lie, my considerations can be thrown away in the toilet, but I wanted a complete image of him, and right now I have it. And it's worse than I've been guessing. If Tenou won't be constantly followed I'm afraid he could do something very stupid. And very dangerous..."
Michiru's gaze went back on Hotaru and the remembering came back.
'Miss Michiru, you have to come back home home right now!!! We can't come into the house, and no one answers. We just hear the baby crying.'
With a hand she shut her eyes, while bringing the other one to her neck, where the first marks were starting to come. The marks of Tenou's hands.
x
Medical Hospital " Edward Dewenish VA Medical Centre"
Portsmouth, Virginia
28 April, 2008
Day 9
It had been raining the whole night, and it seemed as if the meteorological station wasn't going to make the rain stop falling down on Portsmouth.
It was just 9:15 am, but Michiru had equally to keep her lights on because of the weather. And of course that didn't help her mood, it was as dark as the weather outside.
With Tenou she wasn't not in a dead track, but in a buried one. They have been doing 9 days of daily meetings, where Michiru studied the Major like he did with her, they didn't go further than the date of birth - even though she already knew that - a pair of stories about his last companions back in Iraq, and some information else, which, weren't useful for the psychologist. Not even the day when, urging him, Michiru had discovered that Tenou had made the military academy none other than at West Point, but she had just managed to get a spider from the hole: when she asked him about that experience, he had instead preferred to ask where she had studied psychology and the reason for that choice. She agrees to work on empathy, but in doing so, Michiru feared that sooner or later, in treatment, she would end up there.
Among them it was like the game of the cat with the mouse, but the girl had not yet well understood which of the two roles she covered. She heard a knock on the door and left her notes for a moment, inviting anyone to enter. She swore that if it was Foster, she would have pulled him something: today was not just a day. Fortunately - more than Samuel that hers - it was Mamoru.
"May I ask you something?" Said him sitting down.
"Did you come to propose me a change?" Joked Michiru, the other one just struggled. " unless you're interested in a crazy man who thinks that below Kabul there is an alien city, no. I'd like to talk to you about Tenou."
"Do not tell me."
Mamoru leaned back, crossing his legs. "I know that he isn't taking no more his medicines."
"I asked for a gradual reduction. To understand the real problem, I need him to be perfectly awake."
"You know what's the matter. Leaving him without them is a risk."
"I left him the Lorazepam, to sleep."
"Well, it doesn't work. It has been two nights I found him laying on the chair at the entrance staring at the ceiling, and the night before chatting to the nurse. Even if" Mamoru said laying forward the desk "judging by the foulard wore by the nurse has been warring the whole day to hide her neck, I don't think they just chatted."
Michiru just stood there wide opened. Then she laughed, shaking her head.
"The charme Tenou has struck again! Don't know why, but I was expecting that." Mamoru smiled at her, then become serious again.
"I meant that now he's cleaned. Do your tests, try to find out the problem, as you call it, then make Tenou under control again."
"I thought my score was to free him from the medicines."
"Not to the detriment of your safety."
"Let's see..." Michiru provocked him putting a hand under her chin and pretending to think. "If you are so worried why does the Major can walk freely around the building? Do you have a mask to put on him and make him play the Phantom of the Opera in a hospital sauce?"
"His behavior here, so far, was irreproachable, so it's not like we could tie Tenou to bed, and you're not funny anyway."Michiru closed the clipboard and stood up from the desk, imitated by Mamoru."Speaking of Opera, do not you have a concert this week?"
"Tomorrow, I can only try the evening, so I do not know how it will end, if you want I have tickets for you and Usagi, and as always Jenny can keep Chibiusa with Hotaru."Mamoru scratched his head. "Chibiusa has a bit of a fever, and I do not know if Usako wants to leave her with the babysitter, risking, among other things, to attack something in Hotaru."
"Do not worry, it's better than you think of Chibiusa," the girl commented.
"Now I'm going, or my Prince Charming will feel abandoned."
"Have a nice day," Mamoru wished. "And be careful."
Michiru rolled her eyes and started walking towards the well known room 4. She found him immersed in the dim light, but thanks to the large, rain-stained window, she could glimpse a figure seated on the small armchair. She tapped one of the switches near the door, but the light did not turn on. She realized she was wrong, for the umpteenth time, key.
"Crap..." muttered and she heard Tenou laughing.
She pushed the right one and the room was suddenly lightened by the neons, getting on and off in a fast way.
She saw the guy shutting his eyes putting his palm on his face and Michiru felt good about that small revenge.
"Why doc, you could have damaged my retine by doing that, you know?"
Asked the Major while standing up showing up his guardian on his left arm. She couldn't ask nothing at all, because right in that moment two nurses came into the room.
"Doctor Kaioh, did you call?" Asked one of them, who was between 40 and 50 years old, kinda. Michiru looked at her ashamed.
"I wrong, I'm sorry. I always forget the first key is for emergencies."
"It's ok, but it had already been two times this week, then if you really need it..." he didn't end the period, just looked at Tenou. When they were gone, Michiru was greeted, as always, by the attention of the Major Tenou.
"What happened to your arm?" She asked becoming curious about the guardian on his arm; Tenou waited for her to sit down, then she spoke up "it hurt me so they told me to make it rest." She kept quiet for a while.
"It always hurts when it rains or it's humid." Michiru then said "oh, it's the shoulder, right?"
Tenou tilted her head, the young woman could see the pain through her features and two beep eye bags. "The left shoulder, the one they operated you for, uhm, let's see..." she read through her papers "...fracture of the anterior edge of the glenoid, a complication of a dislocation."
The other one just nodded.
"How did you break it?"
Tenoh didn't answer her. He didn't want to give up and Michiru did understand that from the eyed the other one sent her. But he was clearly tired because of the lacks of sleep, and she would have taken it for exhaustion. 'Whoever lasts it wins it' they say.
Then a sight left his lips and she started to feel the taste of the victory.
"On my birthday a Battalion of the Armed Militia Sunnite has thought well to celebrate filling up a van with a TN and blowing up my team and me, " began to tell Tenou." I do not remember much of the incident, only when I wake up ... "
Frosty water. A violent burst, straight on the face.Tenou stopped, and Michiru waited. Finally they were putting a pair of bricks on top of each other. "... when they woke me they were on the ground, and my shoulder hurt."
"Who was holding it?"
"Do not pretend not to know ... You will read my file ... how many? A dozen times?"
"There is no written what happened during the two weeks that he was a Sunni prisoner."
"Well, they certainly did not make me a tab and then put a nice plaster in. I had a practically dead arm and those motherfuckers left me writhing in pain all the time."
Right now Tenou was up and his face an angered mask. "We were there to help people. To offer them our help. We went there to help them."
"Have you ever thought that maybe to help them was just necessary to let them doing their own business?"
Tenou leaned back with the healthy hand to the back of the chair. Green eyes reduced to a crack, facing the girl.
"Do not make me morals about what is right or not right, I have walked on pieces of corpses, doctor, you did not see what I saw down there, and that God, if he exists, spare you."Michiru watched the other bring his healthy hand to his face, covering his eyes.
"My head hurts, Doc. Can we postpone the session tomorrow?"The girl smiled, more than satisfied with the day and the reappearance of the nickname with which Tenou had started calling her. "Sure, go ahead, I'll call you somebody?"But he did not answer and, without looking back, left the room.
x
Day 10
It still rains.
The shoulder hurts, as well as the temples. The night before had been yet another without sleep.
The grayness of the sky did not help. For nothing. Just as it did not help the ticking of the wall clock, amplified by the silence of the room in which the arrival of Dr. Kaioh awaited.
Tic. Tac. Tic. Tac ...
That morning she felt at the limit. She looked at the chasm, struggling not to fall into it. The day before, for the first time since what happened in the Virginia Beach bar, her mind had returned to Iraq. She had come back in there, in that hole dug in the rock, in the nothing near to Tikrit.
Tic. Tac.
She looked at the clock hanging on the wall, a rather sought-after piece to be the decor of a shrink's interview room. She wondered if it had not been a touch of Kaioh. Her doctor seemed a person with a certain taste and refinement. And those aquamarine hair, which framed the sweet features, gave her an almost unreal aura. The first time she had seen her, she had thought it had emerged from the bay. That a wave of light foam had placed it directly on the beach. She still could not explain why.
Tic. Tac,
The pain in her head became more acute, and a grip gripped her stomach. The Botticellian image left her mind, which returned to the darkness of Iraqi nights. There was a clock there too. Of those small, table, plastic. She was leaning against a wall niche, near a grating that looked out over the sky. She could see it from a crack in the wooden planks that closed its niche, as she called the place where she had spent the worst two weeks of her entire existence. At night, between the excruciating pains on her shoulder and her moaning, in the next cell, the ticking of the cheap hands had become the hammer that, unabated, fell on her now very fragile nervous system.
Tic. Tac.
She closed her eyes, her head on the brink of exploding. She felt the suction of the abyss: she considered that letting go would have cost less effort than to resist. And she let herself fall. Room 4 was gone, in its place the loculus. She no longer wore jeans and the Army Army sweatshirt but the uniform was worn out. It was one of the many nights when, back to the wall, she waited with wide-eyed eyes for the arrival of a new day, peering from time to time in the gap between the boards. The wrists tied against each other by chains encrusted with blood.
Tic. Tac.
She could not sleep, or they would take advantage of it. And then she had to think. Keep your mind always in motion, not to succumb. How would she make them pay for those beasts for what they were doing? Unexpectedly, the door swung open and a figure appeared on the door. She was supposed to be one of her jailers, who came as usual to lead the American into the other cell, where she would have to witness again their inhuman actions. No, this time she would have her revenge. They had sent only one, and despite everything could have the best.
She hurled herself towards the same figure who was now closing the door, slamming it against the wall. She brought her right hand to its neck, while her left arm, limited in movement by both pain and being tied to the other by the wrist, was pushing violently against its chest. She estimated that perhaps, striking again and more vehemently, she could break the breastbone to the unfortunate figure who, meanwhile, was trying to wriggle out, no doubt taken aback. She saw it gasp, while the hand did not let the grip on the neck and tightened, taking away its breath. She felt herself being hit on one knee but the adrenaline, added to the blind fury of having one finally in her hands, was too much. It canceled the pain of the blows of that indistinct shape, gradually, however, increasingly weak. She wiped the pangs on her shoulder and head. "Tenou!" it was the strangled scream of that, and after a moment she registered a burning sensation on his left cheek. "Haruka ..." she continued, her voice weakening. An aquamarine reflection filled her eyes, then she found herself on the ground. The impact was violent, and a pressure on the back prevented any movement. She screamed in frustration, first; from pain, then. She blinked, trying to focus on those excited moments. But when she realized what was going on around her, she would have preferred not to have done it. The cell was gone, or rather there had never been. She did not have uniform or even wrists tied. She was on her side; above she had two nurses, one with a syringe in her hand, the other standing on her wrists. And facing her - a hand on her neck as she coughed violently trying to catch her breath, the other still pressing the emergency call button - was Dr. Kaioh. Foster appeared next to her, who helped her to sit down and talk to her, trying to get her back, then Chiba. She felt the needle penetrate her shoulder, a single thought consistent with turning into the overloaded system that was now her head. What have I done? She saw the girl's blue eyes looking for her own, and at the moment when the two looks crossed they read the dismay, shock, bewilderment. In the face of Kaioh overlapped, for a brief moment, another, with completely different features but with a gaze full of those same sensations. She felt her conscience slip away into the celestial irises of the doctor. And when she closed her eyes, she hoped she would not wake up anymore.
Author's notes: yes! I did it! I updated that fast because almost surely tomorrow I won't have anytime to do it, so, I'll wish you a good day by this chapter. Quite a rough one, maybe a bit confused... here we are starting to understand a bit more about the Major, even if it's still confused. About Michiru, I can tell you that in the next chapter there will be a part dedicated to her past, but you'll have to be patient XD. If you have any doubt, let me know it in your review or write me a PM. Until next time this is Milla23 ;)
P.S. of course let me know about any spelling mistakes, it's possible, because right now here it's 3:30 am XD and I'm very sleepy!