A/N: I am finally done with this damn chapter. GOD I hated trying to motivate myself to write this chapter. I just don't know why it was so awful for me to write. I like how it came out all in all, but gosh. I kept getting side-tracked and writing the future chapters of the story and ignoring this one.

But anywho. Hope ya'll like it. It's a bit of a bummer.


He hated the smell of hospitals.

The too-clean scent practically burned his nose, and the alcohol smell didn't help with the sting, either. It was unnaturally clean.

So all in all, when Ienzo woke up, the first sense to come into "consciousness" was his sense of smell.

His mind had slowly started to wake at first. It felt like a thick fog was coating his brain, blurring and deleting all rational thoughts and instead replacing them with confused and hazy fragments – his emotions mirrored his mind. Tired, befuddled.

He hadn't even attempted to open his eyes yet. In all honesty, he didn't really want to, or hadn't even thought about doing it.

But the moment that his brain registered that awful, powerful smell, the fog lessened so abruptly that one eye immediately opened.

However, accompanying the bitter smell were the too bright lights, and with a groan the boy quickly shut his eye again, taking comfort in the darkness.

For a moment he lay there, trying to get used to the smell and organize his thoughts. For one thing, he had no idea why he was in the hospital. What had happened? He took in a deep breath, trying not to cough-

Ienzo's eyes snapped open and he shot up frantically in the bed.

Cough.

Smoke.

Fire.

The nine year old's breath became panicked. The fire! His parents had still been in the house…

Before he had even time to yell the door of the room opened and a man in a white coat came in. He was average-looking - short, dark brown hair and a small goatee, with large solid shoulders. His eyes, blue and sharp, were trained on Ienzo, his expression softening to something the boy thought to be sadness, or worry, or pity.

The doctor (or at least, Ienzo thought him to be one, based on his outfit) opened his mouth to speak, but the boy cut him off, impatient and afraid.

"My parents were in my house!" He exclaimed, hearing his voice crack with trepidation, as well as notice it was hoarse and worn. A sudden cough took over him, and the nine year old shook for a moment while it passed. It was nothing - not as violent as the coughing fits that he had had from the smoke in the fire.

The doctor paused for a moment, then opened his mouth to say something.

"They're okay aren't they?" Ienzo rushed out, unable to stop himself. His bright blue eyes were wide and anxious, and a swell of panic began to build in the pit of his stomach. Tendrils of it began creeping up to his heaving chest as the doctor said nothing. But his eyes told everything.

That had to be okay, Ienzo thought to himself. They had to have gone through the back entrance of the house to escape the flames and smoke. They were fine. His dad had said that they would come right after he had gone out of the house.

Of course they were fine.

But the doctor's eyes challenged that self-assuring claim.

Slowly, cautiously, the doctor took a step or two towards the bed Ienzo was sitting in while he fixed a sleeve on his coat and cleared his throat quietly. The only real noise in the room was the heart monitor that beeped in tune with Ienzo's rapidly beating heart.

"Ienzo," the doctor said, with a calm, yet sympathetic, saddened tone of voice, one that made the boy's blood freeze, "I'm afraid your parents... did not survive the fire."

The boy felt his heart stop.

It was as if the entire world had darkened. The white room around him dimmed, focused on nothing, as if all the intensity from the lights had been sucked into this intense pain that had been brought in his heart so quickly he felt like he was about to faint.

This couldn't be true.

His parents ... his family.

They couldn't be just... gone.

He shook his head to himself, although he felt disconnected from his body altogether. No. He couldn't believe that the people he loved most were dead.

He had just seen them. How could they be gone?

"No," he heard someone say from a faraway place. Only a moment after did he realize it was himself who had said it.

"I'm so sorry, Ienzo," he heard the doctor reply.

The pain in his heart, pushed back by the stubborn denial, surged forward with a new vehemence at the doctor's words. They were really gone. Burned away from his life like they had never existed.

The boy's body curved forward subconsciously, arms snaking around his midsection as if they could squeeze this horrifying, mind-numbing pain away from his heart. His legs pulled partially up near his chest and with a motion of defeat, his head went limp and laid to rest its forehead on his knees.

He would never... see them again.

Each heartbeat was followed by a shock of anguish. No pain in the world would ever be compared to this.

His hands gripped onto the back of his shirt tightly, and with an agonized gasp Ienzo began to sob, his head still leaning on his knees. The nine year old cried so hard his body shook violently.

It hurt... so much...

He wanted it all to go away... he wanted them to come back.

But nothing would ever make them come back.

And while the pain became even more desperate, more agonizing, his vision continued to darken. And he welcomed the darkness.

Anything to make this nightmare to go away.

He fell into a grief-induced sleep, his body no longer able to stay awake from the overwhelming dejection.


Ienzo had awoken sometime later, exhausted and depressed. The doctors had kept their respectful distance while the nine year old cried until he couldn't anymore.

Ienzo, himself, could care less about the doctors or what they were doing. Where the stinging pain had been was replaced by an emptiness that was as bad as the anguish was. He felt only a deep misery - not like the sharp bite of the initial torment, but rather a fathomless, smoldering feeling that burned every flicker of good feelings.

All there was was sorrow.

While his face was slack and emotionless, his emotions being dealt with on the inside rather than out, the pain was mirrored deeply in his eyes.

Two days later, still not having spoken a word since the awful news, a doctor came in to inform him he was healthy - physically. He had escaped the fire with only minor burns on his hands. Ienzo had watched her with an uninterested gaze. What did healthiness matter to him now?

The real reason the hospital continued to keep him there was that the legal paperwork was still being taken care of. Ienzo, with both parents dead, was now an orphan, and with no relatives to speak of, he had no where to go.

But of course, there was an orphanage.

Finally everything was taken care of. The dejected nine year old would be staying at the orphanage, run by a middle-aged woman named Angela.

The lady came for Ienzo the following day. She had very light blonde hair, tied back in a loose bun, with smile creases on her face. Average height - nothing out of the ordinary for her, except the essence of calm she radiated from being with kids all day. It seemed to be a needed commodity.

"Hello Ienzo!" Was the first thing she said to him when entering his room in the hospital.

He stared back at her gloomily, offering not a single word as he sat on the edge of the bed, dressed to go. He was holding onto his stuffed fox which the fire fighters had saved for him, though one of its ears was a bit burned off.

"Are you all set to go?" She asked when he didn't say hello back.

Silence.

"I'll take that as a yes," she continued cheerily, smiling, obviously not phased by his stoniness.

She waved him out of the room, and they soon walked out of the small hospital together.

It was a beautiful day. It was hard for a day not to be beautiful in the paradise that was Radiant Garden. The flowers, in all their brilliant colors, seemed to almost shine in the sunlight. There was a fountain in the middle of the small plaza, the water sparkling like diamonds, and a butterfly whisked near Ienzo with quiet laziness. The weather was warm and comforting - perfect. Everything was perfect.

But to Ienzo, it all seemed grey now.

The emptiness had only gotten worse. He knew exactly where he was going. And as they walked down the quaint cobbled streets, listening to the song birds and the twinkling of the fountains, he felt like he couldn't care less about how pretty the flowers looked, how gorgeous his world was.

It didn't matter anymore. No beauty could ever help his sadness.


The orphanage was nice. It was constructed in sunset-like colors like most of the rest of the town, but was rather small. No wonder. Nothing bad usually happened to any family here, so Ienzo's entire family being destroyed was sure to have upset the entire community.

Angela showed him to his room. It was small but comfortable, and he had the privilege of having it all to himself. He couldn't bear thinking about having to share it with someone else.

It really was a sad sight, though, to see a nine year old stand in an empty room holding nothing but a stuffed animal. The house had burned to the ground, and nothing remained, save some scraps of metal, so he had no belongings.

No belongings, no house, no family.

Ienzo closed his eyes and took a deep breath as Angela left the room to leave him to his own time. So this was it - the harsh reality of it all. Though he had been in a dream world - a perfect family, a perfect life, it had been snatched from him in mere moments, like it was nothing of importance. And now here he was, with nothing. The emptiness in his heart grew, and with it, his deep personal despair.

While at the orphanage, Ienzo made no move to make friends or to speak again. The counselors would come, but all their efforts to pull the boy out of his grief-induced shell were in vain, and ended in such failure that after a while, the majority of the counselors left and only one remained, who every week tried and tried again to make the kid utter one single word.

"How are you feeling today, Ienzo?" She'd ask, her voice very soft and very friendly, a voice you would use to speak to a frightened animal. And then Ienzo wouldn't even bother lifting his head from his book, but gave her a passing, emotionless glance that paused on her face for a moment or two before returning to the novel, whatever it was. To him, that was a fine reply.

"Do you want to talk about anything?" Was also another favorite of the woman's. Ienzo didn't even look up from his book at that question, and when he wasn't with a book, he'd just stare at her, wordless. And then she'd try and ask him some more things, or she'd just talk conversation with him, and then after an hour of this and still not a word from the boy, she'd say goodbye and leave.

And that was that.

Other than the feeble counseling that did absolutely nothing, Ienzo secluded himself in his room and read and read and read. Angela supplied him with a lot of books, too, and while it was not as wonderful as his old bookcase, the one that had burned into ashes, it was still okay.

And that's all he really did. Read.

The books, all in all, let him go somewhere else and forget about his agony. He couldn't bear to live in this awful reality where everything he had ever known was gone. Dead. And it was never coming back, no matter how hard he wished it would.

Books were his only escape. Other realities were his only escape, and it seemed at times like his only option. He had always been highly intelligent and imaginative, and pretending he was somewhere else wasn't difficult.

All he needed was a good illusion.

He tricked his mind into thinking he was really somewhere else. The boy's imagination ran wild, as it was his only mental defense to protect himself from the pain. The images in his mind's eye became so lifelike and so vivid, that he really did believe that it was real.

He forced himself to believe it was real.

He became incredibly skilled at it. One moment, he was trying to be counseled or talked to, and the next, he was immersed in a new place. Everything else – every sound, every person, in the reality he never planned to visit again, was blocked. His imagination took him to far better places. His mind became amazing at conjuring up illusions for him to escape to.

Sometimes he even thought about making illusions for the counselors to go into so they would just go away.

And with these made up images Ienzo tried to forget about his grief. It was one reason why he never spoke. Not only did the shock and sadness of his parents' death strip away his voice, but the fragile line between reality and his own made-up realities might be broken if he even uttered one word. Not that he ever planned on speaking one word, at any rate. He didn't even know if he could even if he wanted to.

And speaking to someone in the real reality would make the illusion of his reality shatter, and once again would he have to live in the life that had been stripped of him.

Sometimes, when he wasn't in his illusions, he wished he had died with them. After all, his old life was dead… nothing would ever be the same.