AN: Things are almost ready to really start happening! We're almost to the end of part 2, and hopefully this story will be wrapped up within 15k, although I can't make any promises.

MAKI

A voice cut through the emptiness.

Maki had heard the voice everywhere: in the dusty piano room that smelled like chalk and sunshine, in the cluttered room with shining posters and laughing girls, under the lights of a stadium with crowds looking on, in the front row seat of Principles of Biology, under the fallen star-streaked sky. It wasn't the only one. Older, familiar voices that were worn to a thread. Cracks broke up the furious slew of questions that Maki could not quite make out from her daze. Somehow, she knew she didn't want to know. Not yet.

It was spring. May, something told Maki, an evening in May. They'd gone for a walk and the sun had begun to set when they'd reached the park. Fireflies rose in response, winking green and yellow at the girls. Children played on the swings and their parents watched like benevolent hawks, waited for a scraped knee to soothe, smiling indulgently at the pair of girls holding hands, talking gently amongst themselves. There was something the girl wanted to tell her, Maki knew, the way her expression was set so firmly.

Maki's parents were pacing when she opened her eyes again. Honoka was sleeping on a chair. Had they gotten older in the semester and a half she'd been away? Her mother's hair was unwashed, uncurled. Her father looked like he hadn't shaved in days. No sound came out of her throat when she tried to speak. It didn't seem necessary. They were here.

It was the same place again.

The girl's hands were firm against Maki's, never pulling too hard or plodding limp against Maki's palms. She took Maki to the pavilion, its corners filled with golden light. Averments of love and good times were scribbled in sharpie. Her friends had been here before, etching their legacy into the bench. The girl had graduated last week, Maki remembered, under the cherry blossoms with her friends. She'd be leaving. They'd only been going out for a few months.

"I want to talk to you about something."

"You say you did everything? I could have performed that surgery better, a kid fresh out of med school could have performed that surgery better, you incompetent-"

"Please! Dear…"

"You know I could have sav-"

"Not in front of Miss Kousaka, please-"

Maki had never heard her dad raise his voice like that. He was a stern man. Not expressive with his words. Never agitated, not even at the hospital on long shifts. She was happy, in a way. That he was here. That he cared. There was a nagging feeling that she should be worried, but it washed away with the call of sleep. There was the warmth of the bed and the strange softness in her chest.

The girl with the blue eyes was speaking. "I've been talking with the others, and… they miss it, you know. I miss it. I know not all of us wanted to go major and that's why we ended it… but, well, I think we're all ready now." She squeezed Maki's hand. "If you're ready."

Maki was a second year, or at least, she must have been, with her hair weighing down on her back. "Of course I'm ready."

"It's a part of who we are."

The dream was wrong, she knew, in some far away balcony of her mind, watching the images like a play. She'd been flirting with Nico when the second years graduated. She wouldn't have been holding hands with Honoka; Honoka had been making plans to go abroad the entire last semester. It'd rained all month. She'd caught a cold that spring. Maki remembered how disappointed Honoka was when the cherry blossoms shriveled with the frost.

"Let's be the idols we were meant to be."

"Maki…"

Honoka's copper hair was sprawled over the side of her bed. On the next chair were piles of books and papers. Like they were home, Maki thought. Maki moved to grasp her fingers, except-

At the shudder of movement, Honoka snapped up. "You're awake!"

Maki tried to move forward.

There was metal on her hands, on her arms. Wires.

Her hands were suspended.

She couldn't move properly. Couldn't reach out to Honoka. There was a numbness where there should have been sensation, no awareness in her fingers. "Honoka, what is…?"

A sick look passed Honoka's face; beyond pity, beyond remorse. She'd never seen that look on Honoka's face before.

She'd seen that look on her father's face.

The crash. The train. Her mind scattered to all corners, picking up the sick crack of metal on metal and the beating of waves. Waves? That didn't make any sense. None of this made any sense. She couldn't feel her fingers, and of course she could always feel her fingers.

A scream was building, in the back of her raw throat.

This couldn't have happened. Maki was a college student who spent time with her girlfriend, just a normal girl, not… this was another strange dream, she thought, another one she could sleep through and all of this would go away.

"Maki, I…"

"W-what is this?"

"In the crash, you… Maki, I'm so sorry, your hands…"

"What about my hands?"

"You'll be able to use them again, but…"

Maki, the perfect child set to take over the hospital, Maki, who'd been in and out of pre-med camps since she was eight, Maki, whose parents had strung all their hopes upon like lights on a tree, to finish their work, Maki, star student of Otonokizaki high school, Maki, who had been expected to study brain surgery by her father, Maki, who had wanted to play piano professionally once…

Her mind rejected this. This made no sense. Maki's hands were her life. "Can you… ask the nurse to give me another dose of the painkiller…?"

Silence fell on the playground, and only the crickets were speaking with them now. Fireflies flashed around them like a fairy circle, like princesses in their own storybook. "Nico's manager wants to sign us. Nico's… a little hesitant. Since she's the number-one super idol right now. But she says she misses performing with a group. She even wants the sub-units back together. For music videos and stuff. She said she wanted to finally do a Cutie Panther video…" Honoka pouted. "I kind of wanted to be in a sub-unit with you…"

"Just you, me, and, oh…" Maki tried to think of an unlikely sub-group, "Nozomi, maybe?"

"Yeah! Or maybe with Rin and we could do a stars and sun theme…"

"Do you really think… I mean, we're still just kids, and we're getting signed? Do you think we can still do it? I'm a little rusty."

"Of course we will." She kissed Maki's cheek, "Are you ready to be an idol again?"

Her father wasn't making eye contact. Maki let the words roll off her as he spoke. He was saying something, how she could still do whatever she wanted and they'd back her up a hundred percent, that it was his own fault for pushing her into medicine in the first place. Not sending her to the best school possible. Not having her live on campus. Someone was crying.

He wasn't making sense. None of this made sense. This wasn't Maki her father was talking to, was he? Who was this really happening to? Words came out with no thought. "I'm not going to pass theoretical methods of physics, am I?"

Maki pretended she didn't see her father's eyes tearing up. She should have gone home more, she thought. She never dreamed they'd come up just for this.

She'd almost fallen asleep, when Honoka came in. The world was blurred under the fog of the medicine. (Time didn't pass. Eternity would come and go as the nurses changed shifts, her parents paced endlessly, Honoka arriving and leaving, all of them talking in hushed whispers. "We can afford anything, just, please—" she'd heard her father say. The whispers never stopped.)

There was a sense they were alone. Dim twilight peeked through the cracks of the shades, although night and day meant little to Maki. How long she'd been there, when the train had crashed; it was as if she were floating away from existence, into her own pocket of space.

Honoka pulled her chair close to the bed. Maki tried to look up, tried to say something. (Did it matter, what she said? Did anything she did matter anymore?) Speech was gravid; her tongue had been pulled to the bottom of the sea, words gathered in her mind with little reason behind them like a minimal poem.

Where? My hand. Metal. Back to the fireflies. Back to then…

"Maki…"

Honoka. There was a sense of relief whenever Honoka and her parents were there and a sense of apprehension when they were gone. She felt very young again, like a child waiting for her family to come home. Maki would never admit it, but something about being on the other side of the bed made her scared. How would she ever have done this? She would have made a terrible surgeon. Operating on these frightened creatures shivering in their thin sheets. Watching the way their faces rose and fell at the doctor's word. It was too visceral for Maki. To have such power over life and death. So she told herself.

There was a faint scent of flowers. On the stark counter was a bouquet, something bright and cheery. Maki smiled, or at least attempted at a smile. Honoka's eyes widened.

"You're awake!"

I dreamed. Of you. We were young… and whole. Maki sort of nodded at her.

"I miss you! I miss you so much. Going back to the apartment is…" Honoka sighed. "I can't even imagine what it's like for you. I've been here every day and I'll keep coming, okay? They have to throw me out every night. Your parents are here a lot too. They've been really nice. I'd get you something fun to eat but I don't think they'd let me put that in the IV. You should be able to eat real food soon! Er. At least liquids." Honoka was talking a little too fast, Maki thought. "When you're better I'll make you some of the sweets I used to help with at the bakery. But uh, your mom helped me pick out some flowers for you."

There was a tender feeling in Maki's chest, that burned and bloomed. "I-it's pretty…" Her voice came out as a rasp.

Honoka beamed at her. "I knew you'd like it."

They're beautiful. "Mmm."

"You know your dad actually made me keep going to classes after the first couple of days? Can you believe that? He said one of us out of school was bad enough."

Maki could believe it.

"It's not the same without you there… studying is hard, you know? I've started drinking black coffee all the time. It's gross! I'm… I'm so tired. And…" Honoka let her last word trail off. She grasped the railing of the hospital bed. Her nails had been bitten down. There were dark circles under her eyes, as if she hadn't slept in a week.

"You… should sleep. Good for you."

"I can't."

"That's what happens…" Her throat felt like it had been rubbed with sandpaper. "…when you drink coffee all the time."

Honoka laughed. "I missed you, Maki."

Maki felt strangely at peace, in that moment. She wished Honoka could come up on the bed with her, but… Somewhere a small part of her was screaming, that this was so not okay at all. But that part of her mind was easy to ignore right now, with the inability to follow complicated trains of thought. "Mmm."

With a light touch, Honoka stroked her hair. "You're always pretty, even after surgery. It's not fair, Maki. The rest of us would at least have to brush our hair."

It would hurt to laugh, so Maki frowned at her girlfriend. "Haven't done anything but sleep."

Honoka's fingers were warm on her head. Each touch was careful and soft, as if she pressed too hard Maki would break. She was focused on her, like she was devoting each of Maki's facial features to memory. "You don't need to do anything." Maki wanted to reach out and hold her hands hand, to pull her close, and-

The restraints jerked as Maki tried to move forward. Honoka's face fell.

"Ah! Maki! I'm sorry, I shouldn't have…"

"Honoka! Please. I. This is… Don't stop touching me. Ever. Don't leave."

"I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."

They sat in silence for a while. Somewhere something was beeping, nurses were chattering, wheels were rolled down the hall. This was her life, in another universe. This is what Maki was supposed to have become. A doctor. The hospital setting should have been familiar. It wasn't.

Honoka almost said something several times, as she sat stroking Maki's hair. Each time Maki lifted her eyes to attention, Honoka would turn away, broiling with some inner conflict on her expression face. What was it, Maki wondered. What could her idol-turned-scientist girlfriend have possibly be keeping from her? She thought she saw tears in Honoka's eyes.

"Hey."

Her voice was a little strained. "Maki?"

"Are you… okay?"

Honoka nodded too enthusiastically. "Yeah, yeah. Totally fine. We need to worry about you, okay? I'm not a concern right now."

"You're my girlfriend. Dummy."

"But…"

"Too tired to argue right now, Honoka… you're going to tell me everything when I'm out of here, okay?"

"I will." Honoka kissed her forehead with a surgeon's delicacy. "Really."

"I'll be furious if you don't."

"Everything."

Fatigue tugged at Maki's eyes. Sleep was waiting to coil around her, taking her away to a place with fireflies and idols. Her girlfriend smiled at her, sad but Maki could still feel the love from its warmth. A song crept into her ears, its words soft and irrelevant. Honoka's voice sounded so melancholy, so sweet and full. It was one of the first things Maki fell in love with, she realized. Honoka's voice was a comfort, a cool blast of air on a hot day. As long as she was there, everything was going to be okay. "No matter what the future brings…"

"I'm so sorry, Maki."

Maki wasn't sure she was dreaming, when she heard Honoka speaking again.

"You know… I…" Honoka had the railing in a vice grip. It was still dark, but a sliver of an expression could be seen. Her face was crumpled, her eyes raw and wet. "I messed up. This all… could have been prevented. "If I had just… moved faster… I could have done it, but…"

Maki had absolutely no idea what Honoka was talking about.

Her mouth wouldn't seem to move, open. The nurses must have upped the dosage of painkillers again— even keeping her eyes open was a burden.

"Maki… none of this was supposed to happen. Any of it. You were supposed to be the one who did… Everything is so messed up… I tried doing everything myself again, and now…" A sob crept into her voice. "If I'd just told you, told you what you needed to do, then maybe…I messed up. I messed up so bad. I messed up the first time and I don't even remember it, I messed up this time, I can't mess up again. I can't keep doing this, when I don't even know what really happened before. But I can't go stop now. Even if… even if for a moment, we were happy. I have to, because everything…"

"I'm going to make this right, Maki. I'm going to fix this. Even if… even if you can't come with me. Even if I'm alone. Even if you won't remember… But… you'll be okay again."