Title: Waking Up (2)

Characters: Kagurazaka Asuna, Negi Springfield

Genre: General, Angst

Rated: G

Timeframe: Monday, July 13th, 2009, between Chapter 21: Darkness: Rikki, and Chapter 22: The New Batch

Spoilers: This one's meant to be read alongside Chapter 22; you won't understand what happened to Negi unless you've read the previous arc.

"Ugh..."

He opened his eyes, and immediately closed them again; the blindingly bright light only worsened his already throbbing headache.

"Negi?"

"...Asuna-san?" he said, his voice oddly raspy.

"It's me, Negi," she replied. He felt her take his hand, and smiled a little as he again tried opening his eyes, if a little more slowly this time. The first thing he saw was Asuna's mismatched eyes looking down at him as she grinned that familiar grin of hers she used whenever she was trying to hide her worry. She moved back as Negi tried to sit up; he found the task surprisingly difficult until she helped pull him upright.

"What happened?" he asked as he looked around the small white room he found himself in. He recognized it as one of the secret hospital rooms located deep underneath the middle school administration building. He looked down at his body, but despite the IV tube attached to his arm, he didn't see any obvious injuries. Asuna grinned again, and he finally noticed just how tired she looked.

"Do you want the long version or the short version?" Asuna asked.

Negi thought it over for a moment until his stomach growled. "Give me the short version now; you can give me more details after I eat something."

"Sure," Asuna said, then paused as if to collect her thoughts. "Okay," she started, holding up a certain dead pactio card. "See this?" she asked.

Negi raised an eyebrow at the question, but nodded.

"From what we can tell, it had a ghost attached to it. She attached herself to you when you picked this up-"

"But that was years ago!" Negi blurted. It must have been two, no...three years ago that he had found that card on the beach up north. To think there had been a ghost attached to it...

Asuna shrugged off his interruption and continued the story. "Turns out she's some hugely powerful mage, but needs a human body to use her magic. And guess who ended up volunteering?" she asked, grinning at him again.

Negi rolled his eyes and heaved a sigh. "How bad was it?" It was extremely dangerous for a ghost to possess a living body, especially if they tried to do something like channel magic power with it.

Asuna's grin slipped. "I'm not gonna lie to you...it was pretty bad. Kazumi and Reiko got knocked out, Sayo-chan got eaten, and you puked up something like a quarter of the blood in your body," she said.

Negi's expression must have shown his thoughts clearly, because Asuna quickly expanded upon her previous statement.

"Everybody's okay of course; Sayo didn't even seem to notice, and Kazumi was up and walking around again half an hour later. It took a while longer for Reiko, but she's awake now too. Don't worry Negi, you did a good job."

Negi clammed up and looked away. Now that he knew that a ghost had been attached to him for so long, he realized that there was a gaping hole in his emotions that he had never noticed before, something the ghost had left behind. While he didn't feel the deep disgust at himself and his failings that he had gotten used to over the years, the depths of his disappointment in himself were still vast and doing their best to fill that emptiness the ghost had left behind in his soul. Whatever Asuna said, he was responsible for this incident; he had picked up that card and brought that ghost to Mahora. Whatever had happened had been a direct result of his own actions, and he hadn't even been able to do anything to stop it. Instead...instead, his friends and students had been forced to throw themselves into the line of fire to clean up his mistake, and from what Asuna said, Kazumi and Sayo and Reiko had been hurt because of it. It was...disappointing. He wanted to punish himself somehow, but anything he tried would only make Asuna and Nodoka and the others worry; there was nothing he could do, and that somehow made him feel even worse. So, in the end, he did what he did best...he put on a pleasant face and pretended nothing was wrong.

"I'm sorry to interrupt Asuna-san, but I am very hungry..." he said, smiling at her and hating himself for purposely distracting her like that.

"Ah...of course, I'll be right back," she said as she stood up and smiled back at him. So great was his self loathing that he barely even noticed until she had left the room, and that only made him feel worse.

Negi sat there in silence on the hospital bed for a long, long moment, trying to figure out what he should do. His options weren't good; almost anything he tried-extra training, self punishment, staying away from the others to keep them safe—would only make the others worry, and he had caused enough of that over the years already. The only thing he could think of, the only thing, was deception. Pretending everything was all right. Pretending he didn't hate the sight of his face in the mirror every morning. Pretending he wasn't the reason his friends all suffered. Yes...it was the only thing that might work. And, while the idea itself was extremely distasteful, in this case he felt that it was necessary. He would lie to everyone so they wouldn't worry about him, he would lie to his acquaintances, his coworkers, his friends, anyone that might be concerned about him. He would lie to them all for their own good, pretend that nothing was wrong, pretend he didn't feel like he was shriveling up inside...

"Hey Negi, I'm back!" Asuna said as she opened the door and stepped through, carrying a tray with some unappetizing food on it. "They haven't started making lunch yet, so you get the leftovers from breakfast."

"Ah, thank you Asuna-san!" Negi said, pasting on his best smile as he scooted back on the bed to make room for the tray. Asuna gave him an odd look, but he continued smiling as he looked down at the colorless eggs, burnt toast, and the small carton of milk. 'Just keep lying, that's all I'm good for anyway.' "This looks delicious!" he said as he picked up the plastic fork lying on the tray and started to eat.

'Yes, that's it, I just have to keep lying; I have to keep everyone else from worrying and getting into trouble because of my failings. Just keep lying...'

Author's Notes: And this is what happens when you take someone like Negi and don't give him the character development he got in Mundus Magicus in the manga. Keep in mind, in the Still Waters universe, the magic world trip with Class 3A never happened due to the events of Still Waters 1; events in Still Waters 2 and Still Waters 3, however, are forcing things in that direction, albeit six years later. Still, it should be exciting.