+ Fallacy, a 100themes Challenge +
Sarehptar
Theme: 35, Hold My Hand
Characters: Kharl, the Star Princess, cameos for Rune, Rim Kaana, and Grinfish
Pairing: Kharl/Star Princess
Warnings: Suicide attempt and overall sappiness.
Need to Know Info: This is an AU, hee hee!
Title Provider: Paper Thin Hymn (Anberlin)
A Sleepless Night Becomes Bitter Oblivion
It was raining: miserable, sleet-like rain that blanketed the world in a steady beat and a silvery sheen. The roads were slick with oil and ice, but I paid that little attention. The digital watch on my wrist flashed 3:05 AM, lighting the black interior of my car rhythmically with a sickly neon-blue light. The radio sung and skipped, fading in and out of static as the car wound along the hillside road. My fingers tapped nervously, almost of their own accord, on the steering wheel—in time with the music, my head pounded. I had worked without sleep the last few nights; each guitar chord slammed inside my skull like a hammer. I ached to turn the radio off, but it was the only thing keeping me awake.
…When your only friends are hotel rooms…
…These roads never seemed so long…
There was never any time to stop. One second there was only the dark road and the silver-black rain, and then next second there was her. She filled my vision impossibly, a flash of light and oblivion. Her rose eyes closed, her dripping pink locks shone in the headlights, her coral lips lifted in a smile that shone with relief. Then the car struck her body with a sickening crack and a screech of brakes.
Oh God… My throat was full of bile and fear and the words died on my tongue. I threw the car door open, hinges screaming an echo of my desperation. The rain was heavy and cold on my back and face; my lilac hair fell limp and wet against the back of my neck, but I hardly felt it. Oh God… Ice choked the side of the road where the car had skid; I slipped in it and fell. My hands tore raw on the asphalt, my face came level with the front bumper of the car—there was blood over the broken headlight.
I pulled her body out from beneath the car, trying and failing to still the trembling of my hands. Her white dress was black with dirt and torn, blood bloomed over her chest and stained the long hair that tangled in my fingers and spilled around her. For a long moment, I was sure she was not breathing—and then she coughed once, a ragged, wet sound that sent a trickle of blood down her pale chin. Rose eyes, clouded by pain, half opened. She made an effort to focus on me and failed.
"It hurts… It wasn't…. supposed to…" She was alive. The terror or the guilt or something inside me cracked, and I felt as if I might cry in relief, in regret. I left her lying there, half-dead eyes looking up into the rain, as I tore the cell phone from my briefcase. My fingers pounded on the lit keys, drops of silver hit the screen and rebounded.
"There's been an accident. Yes. She's going to die if you don't get someone here now! Highway 35. Near the summit of Mount Emphaza… Yes. No…" I hung up sharply, cutting the last of the 911 operator's useless questions off. Who cares about the make of my car—there weren't any other cars on the road! I stumbled back to her side, ripping off my jacket and pressing it to the open wound in her side. Her eyes stared upward blankly, and I knew she had fallen back into unconsciousness. "Oh God…" I murmured again, holding her bloody form off the icy ground.
The distance thump of helicopter rotors tore my attention from trying to find other injuries on her body, and I peered anxiously through the haze of rain. The helicopter blazed over our heads, sending the rain down in a furious draft that tugged at my clothes and her hair. Too slowly, it settled on the road, and like an army, a team of emergency medics swarmed out of it. She was pulled from my arms, inspected, attached to an IV of what must have been morphine, garnered with an oxygen mask. The strange woman looked impossibly fragile and tragic, too pure to be painted in red and black. With daring haste, the medics wheeled her away on a stretcher toward the white helicopter, whose metal sides seemed to sparkle and heave in the rain.
"I'm coming too," I insisted before I even realized what I'd said.
"I'm sorry, sir," a soft-faced, blond medic said to me, "but in a situation like this you'll need to remain at the crime scene and complete a police report…" Crime scene? The woman had stepped out in front of my car on purpose!
"I'm coming too," I repeated, and the determination and cold assurance in my voice seemed to make him suddenly unsure.
"You really aren't allowed…" I stepped into the helicopter behind the stretcher and left the blond nurse gaping in the rain.
X-X-X
The clock ticked again, and the sound echoed overly loud in the silent ICU waiting room. There were no windows, but it was nearly five-thirty in the morning, and I could imagine the skyline beginning to lighten—a warm, dark cobalt blue, with shades of grey and then gold. I hoped for a moment that the rain had stopped, but then the thought of the sun rising over blood on the road turned in my stomach. I prayed that it would rain without stop, hard enough to wash away all the mistakes that had been made that night.
"Renkin? Kharl Renkin?" A nurse wielding a clipboard stared through the room, and I stood to a flurry of whispers. My name was not unknown: a good majority of people had heard about my recent ambitious business merger with Draqueen's entertainment enterprise. I followed the short woman down a sterile, white hallway. There were cheery and colorful paintings scattered liberally over the walls, but they made the place only more chilling.
"This is an unorthodox situation, as I'm sure you can imagine." The nurse had pink hair, almost as pink as the woman I'd hit, but she had a hard attitude around her that seemed entirely different from the fragile aura I'd felt holding the rose-eyed girl. "Normally, only family are allowed to enter the rooms in this unit, if at all. However, in light of your dismissal of a large group of hospital rules already, and your rather generous donation to our facilities, the staff has decided to turn a blind eye in this particular incident."
"Is she… awake?"
"Yes, but…" The short nurse shook her head and opened the door for me, turning back and vanishing down the hallway as if she had never been at all. I took a nervous step inside the door, and the sound of my boot on linoleum tile clashed with the beep of her heart monitor. As if frightened, she turned her head quickly to look at me—I could tell the motion pained her because she winced, and then crystalline tears pooled in her roseate eyes.
"Please… forgive me… I'm so sorry… that I involved you in this." Each breath seemed to pain her.
"I should have been watching more carefully."
"No! I… I wanted to die."
"That would have been a terrible waste," I murmured and sat in the room's armchair. The shabby pink material smelt heavily of sterilizer, but I ignored it in favor of watching her. They had coated her cheeks in butterfly bandages, where the road and glass had left scratches. The blue-grey hospital gown dwarfed her thin frame, and her delicate fingers knotted nervously in the thin peach blanket draped across her bed.
"I feel like my life has been nothing but a waste." A sharp rap on the doorframe stopped me from asking what she meant, and a green-haired man in a white coat stared tepidly at me.
"Tenno-san," he addressed the broken woman finally, "the X-ray results have just come in." He sighed heavily and switched his clipboard between his hands several times. "The good news is that only the femur of your left leg was broken, and the break was clean and will heal given time."
"Is there bad news?" I managed to mutter, despite my constricted throat.
"Yes," he tried to offer a comforting smile that failed miserably, "the wound in your side is far deeper than we expected. A large piece of glass cut through the flesh between your fourth and fifth ribs, and is embedded in your left lung. Right now, it is being kept still by the amount of muscle it penetrated—but if it were to somehow be moved, it is possible that your lung would collapse. Furthermore, the glass cut through an artery that runs from your lung to your heart. If the blood were to begin to hemorrhage at the site of penetration, it is likely that any clots formed there would break free, be pulled into your heart, and cause cardiac arrest."
I slumped back against the wall, and my hands on the arms of the chair were shaking. He stared sharply into her bruised face. "If we do not surgically remove the shard of glass and close up your lung, you will die."
"That's…" Fear flashed briefly in her face, and then it was gone, replaced by a fierce acceptance. "Please do not perform the surgery. I would like to die."
"Why?" I asked, no longer able to sit quietly. "Why did you try to take your life?"
"I wanted to make at least one decision… of my own."
"Dying isn't a decision. It's a way out." My voice was cold, and I regretted the tone when she flinched.
"That's… what I wanted. A way out of the life that chosen for me."
"And you can't tell me that the thought of being dead pleased you…"
She shifted, could not meet my eyes. "I…"
"If you want to be free of the life you had, you should have tried to change it yourself. Stepping in front of cars isn't going to solve anyone's problems," I muttered, trying hard to keep the vapid emotion from my voice.
"But I…"
"A person brave enough to face death should be brave enough to face life." I mustered a true smile, my first for the night. "And, though I don't even know your name, I have a feeling that you can change things. You certainly changed my routine a few hours ago."
"I can change things…" she repeated, in that lulling, quiet voice of hers.
"Tenno-san, the hospital intends to call your mother to discuss the surgery with her," the green-haired doctor suddenly interjected.
"Don't," she tried to cry, but it came out a choked whisper. "I'm going to… make my own decisions..." She stared at me for a long moment, roseate eyes unsure. I could almost see her warring against herself, and I smiled gently.
"I don't know you..." she said at last, "but I want to believe you. I'm so foolish…"
"Will you undergo the surgery Tenno-san?" the doctor pushed gently.
"I… I will." she smiled weakly, and even that was beautiful. "It's my decision... to live… to change myself." The green-haired man nodded and hurried into the hall, most likely to prepare the gurney and operating staff.
"Thank you—" tears shone in her gaze as she looked up at me, but the drops did not fall, "—for saving me." The distant, approaching sound of the medics rung down the hallway.
"Will you… Will you hold my hand?" she asked, and her voice was tremulous and hopeful. The medical staff crowded into the room and she was lifted gently onto the stretcher.
I took her delicate fingers in mine and answered finally, "I would like nothing more."
Theme 36: Precious Treasure
The Earth Dragon Knight smiles again, a little smug, and bites into another strawberry.