Chapter 9

Fading to white

Gunshots.

Bullets.

I had to run, but I felt frozen to the spot. I had to fight but I felt more scared than I ever had in my life. I had never felt so out of control, never so hauntingly hanging in limbo like some limp puppet.

Ken…

…I tried to kill him. Kill him. Oh god…

It was the most murderous, betraying thought I had ever thought in a long time and I never wanted to have it again. So I ran. I jumped from the crackling, gaping hole in the wall while I hid my look of terror behind a mask of indignant rage.

I was confused, running like a blind man from the scene of some terrible crime. I didn't know how I had come to be here, back at the safe house with Ken quailing in fear beneath my raised fist. The last thing I remembered was standing in the park and seeing Ken…and now I was trying to kill him and Schwartz were here and Yoji was unconscious and…oh god, what had I done...?

I didn't want to know. So I just kept running. I couldn't let the enemy know, couldn't let Schwarz know what I was feeling, couldn't show fault or flaw to the enemy. I couldn't let them know how weak I felt in heart and body or I would most certainly fall. But…

…Wasn't I falling already? Hadn't I already fallen further than I'd ever anticipated anyone could? Ever anticipated that I could? I felt dark and alone and isolated and my mind was a whirlwind of treachery and deceit and pain and loss. Loss of what I was not sure, but there was loss in there, struggling and pulling its way through the darkness as my boots clicked over the road hard and fast like a metronome.

The bullets spat and snapped at me, but I used my power to shield myself. I wasn't sure why or how I did it, maybe it was more of an instinctual reaction than an act of self preservation. Whatever my twisted black drop of a mind had decided to do it was saving my life right now, so I let it do what it wanted while I kept on running through the steadily darkening street. My mind had begun to waver now, a huge tumult of darkness and light a swirling vortex just behind the barriers of my eyes, and I felt like I was no longer in control of myself. I felt like someone else was slipping into my skin, making me move my legs, using my hands to clear my path of garbage cans and park benches. I watched with a dull horror as the metal and wood splintered on far walls with the force of the throw. I felt myself scream in shame and terror yet no sound would escape my lips. I felt like something was bottling me up inside myself, pushing me down so far that I could hardly even see through my own eyes as I felt my body suddenly halt and turn as a name was shouted. It sounded far off and distant, like an echo through a winding tunnel…

"Abyssinian!" it cried in a tone so commanding that even my treacherous body could not resist the urge to obey the underlying command to stop.

I barely saw the man who stood on the opposite side of the slick wet street, absently noting that rain had begun to fall. I could just see the shimmering light reflecting off his glasses and the slick gun-metal revolver which held steady in his confident grasp. I barely felt myself lift my hands and place them together as I let out a blast of energy towards my pursuer. It was so out of my control that it made my gut twist in revulsion at the feeling of my own hands not being under my control. The very thought made me want to turn and run again until all of…this was left far behind me like a distant nightmare. I didn't want to see that man blown into the wall like those fragile seeming park benches, watch him shatter as he hit…

Yet, even as I willed my body to move with all my strength, that eventuality never came to fruition.

The sound of energy frazzling and bouncing and crackling off energy hit my ears like a tempest. I was not so well protected in my suppressed psyche to be able to ignore the fact that my ears were ringing like church bells. Or that the man with the glasses wasn't alone. The little boy who stood next to him, hands upraised in a mirror image to my own, was blinking in surprise at my talent. It was almost as if we were exact mirror images, myself and little Prodigy, both just as confused as to the situation, and both acting purely out of instinct. I tried not to dwell on the fact that I was comparing myself to my enemies and finding unique similarities; that fact was too dark and raging for me to want to add it to my already unstable mind.

Yet was it even my mind at all anymore?

-…So sorry…- was all I could coherently string together as a sudden darkness veiled my vision.

I felt myself break into a run all of a sudden, my preternatural speed flinging my legs farther than it should be humanly possible to do. I felt the wind on my face, but it was an absent far off feeling that I barely registered as my own. I had wanted to run from this confusion, this pain, yet it was not my own will that made my body move. I had no idea what was happeneing. I felt like I was trapped inside my own body, that the safe warm feeling that Aya-chan had inspired in me was now gone and that I was falling.

Falling…

………...into what?

……………………Where am I?

………………………………….Why is it so dark?

……………………………………………………Am I dead?

………………………………………………………………..Am I dying?

……………………………………………………………………………..Is…Ken alright?

-You're alright…Ken, - I blurted out, trying to grasp onto the sickening swirl of the darkness that was pervading my mind like a slick poison. It was jumbling my thoughts, making me feel things I hadn't felt since I was twelve years old, bringing back memories that I had closed off a lifetime ago and hoped would never to resurface.

- = 19 \* CHINESENUM3 十九-    [1]

The number flashed into my mind, stark white on black background. I blanched at the pain it dredged from my mind, the memories it brought back, blanched as I felt myself become smaller and smaller in the consuming darkness. The memory was so stark and yet vague all at the same time. I felt like, like I was really there, back there again at the start of my nightmare. I could feel the flames, I could see the destruction and the pain and feel the heart wrenching sorrow of my sister so cold and so unresponsive in my arms. I almost cried out in horror before I realised that it was all an illusion, my twisted mind dredging up the most painful of memories. I thought I had locked them up and thrown away the key.

Obviously not.

Then it subsided and I managed to gain some semblance of control over myself. I looked to the darkness all around me like I had never seen anything so pitch, so fathomless. Yet I don't think that I ever had. It was like being inside a vat of tar, inside a void so devoid of light that nothing bright could ever exist inside of it. Yet…there was a light. It was me? Me? I felt like I was glowing, yet when I tried to look down at my hands I found nothing. It was like I didn't even have a body anymore, like I was nothing but a refuge of light cut off in this suppressing darkness. I could still feel what my body was doing, could still feel the wind on my face. Yet more importantly I could feel the raging swell of memories and pain towering high above, ready to consume me like a tsunami. I hid from it, cowered back as I felt it rush towards me. I didn't want to see, not that again…please…

…please…

…Ken…

…help me…

Then there was the touch. I felt it like a blinding spark, a surge of raw electricity that carried with it pain and remembrance. The darkness had melded with my sanctuary of light, the darkness had found its way in to my very being, my very essence. I had thought myself almost naively safe here for one precious moment, suppressed but safe; yet that was all a false hope, a natural fear in the face of destruction. That was what was happening though wasn't it? I was being destroyed, slowly poisoned from the inside out…and there was no one here to save me. Not this time. Not ever now. I was alone. I was…dead.

Then that feeling…that…

…my…god.

The second touch. It was so, pure. I could feel its…familiarity, its friendship, its…love. It was…

…Ken?

And it brought back memories. Good memories.

The time when Aya-chan and I had gone to the park to get ice cream and she had dropped hers into the grass so I had given her mine. I had smiled at her through the sunlight, like I hadn't done for years now.

The time we had all gone on holiday and I had snuck out to the beach at night and had stood laughing at the beauty of the midnight ocean. The time that…

Then it was gone. I was gone. The darkness had…won…no…I couldn't let it go…not now…Ken was helping…Ken was…Ken…Ke…

I felt the darkness consume what little was left of my mind with one swift gulp. I screamed as I felt my mind disintegrating, being torn apart and chewed up into unrecognisable little pieces. I wanted to cry out, but all connection to my physical being had been severed. I was alone and dying in the darkness, all alone like I had been for so long.

I didn't want to be alone anymore.

I didn't…want to die…Ken, please…

The darkness chuckled and shifted around me, the voice emanating from its own sickening maw a terrifying parody of my own. As I felt the last of my light snuffed out, its voice followed me into the void, echoing and emblazoning itself into my memory.

-Who is this person called…Ken?-

And it was like someone was there with me, watching the slow dematerialisation of my will, my testament to my own sanity, my…well, me. I think I knew who it was, I think that I knew who was there beside me in the darkness; they were the only other bright light in this horrible sickening dark. I think that was why the insubstantial remains of my tattered mind, crying and broken and scarred drifted towards that bright centre to what had become my universe. I think that I saw brown eyes, maybe more chocolate…so warm…so…serene. I just latched onto that light before it left, dissipating into the ether like blackness, becoming one with it and melding with it. It felt so safe, so warm, so inviting, so…

"…Ken" I finished in a shadow soft whisper that flitted through the cavernous maw before I lost all of my consciousness to that blinding white light.

[1] – This is the number 19 in Japanese. I thought it would be more appropriate if Ran thought in Japanese considering, well…that he's Japanese! I'm not actually sure when Ran's family was killed and his sister went into a coma, but the number 19 brings back some vague memory. If it's wrong then please tell me because I'm not sure myself ^-^!

AN: Well, couldn't resist it ^~ ^ woops! As if I would let Ran go that easily! Hope this is making sense (ha ha!). As ever please R&R, feedback welcome ^-^.