.hack//Legend Of Twilight Bracelet Fan Fiction ❯ Never Ending Void ❯ Prologue ( Prologue )

Author: Breakin The Ice

 

Title: Never Ending Void (I'll be calling it NEV most of the time)

 

Disclaimer: I own diddlehy squat. Meaning I own nothing but Anissa, Kayane, their parents, Shi, Kara No, Kuroi, Korosu, Shizuka Na, Hitori De, and whoever the hell you may not recognize that may be a part of it. Shuyin, and Tengaki

 

Rating: R for language, violence, mature themes, psychological depression and adult moments.

 

Pairing: Same as in Sakura Blossoms.

 

Takes-Place: About two months after Chapter 11 of Sakura Blossoms, and two weeks before the Epilogue of Sakura Blossoms.

 

Summary: Betrayal has left them angry, confused, and with a thirst for revenge. A loss has left him bitter and desperate, seeking to no end to find a way to regain who's no longer there. The absence of a woman that had watched over them has left them all without a lead to keep them from falling apart and breaking down for fear of demoting themselves in one's suspiciously wise eyes. In a sudden uprising, an enemy seeks to put an end to a killer many are addicted to and love… And thus begins the destruction of The World.

 

Note: The title may be subject to change still. I am pretty satisfied with the title, as of now, but my mind may decide on another. Bear with me if I do make a change.

 

-Prologue-

 

I've always heard it said, and have thought, that whenever waking up from an involuntary sleep, most likely a long one, you would feel unrested, with a loss of memory of how everything happened, and a certain numbness that is neither calming nor unsettling.

 

Nothing makes sense, everything is a haze, and you're just thoughtless, looking around without the knowledge or instinct to move, say something, or to even panic when panicking is the more reasonable choice at hand.

 

You're mouth goes dry, eyes aren't solidly open but fully aware, you don't hear anything, not even the sound of your breathing or the sound of your heartbeat, and then, suddenly, everything snaps in your mind.

 

The white walls, thin clothing, needle in the back of the hand, total silence except for the abrupt and haunting beeping of a heart monitor.

 

Memory of the actual word 'comatose', along with the meaning, names of colors suddenly pop up in your brain. Black, red, silver, yellow, blue, green, all of them suddenly are reinserted into your vocabulary.

 

You remember all the people you knew, all the people you disliked, all your mistakes, all the achievements made in life, and all the people that you've helped and that you've hurt. Family, friends, those you liked, everything.

 

All except the certain events that led up to being how you got there.

 

How you're sitting up in the white, discomfortingly sterile bed of a hospital, apparently late at night, the green light of the heart monitor the only thing illuminating anything in the room yet the beat still regular, and without a change. Not fazed at all.

 

The only thing that comes up when focused upon in the mind is a flash of silver metal then a lurching of the stomach, where it hurts more than the consistent ache of your bones, then the mental image of clear glass, shattered, broken, small and sharp.

 

Nothing makes sense and, for some reason, you know that there's a reason that will give you at least a small sudden sting of guilt in your heart and sudden worry. Maybe it's the cold fact that no one is with you, or the numb, unresponsive feeling of seeing the time '3:02' on a digital clock with the date ' November 30' underneath it, or the possibly the barely noticeable, but noticeable enough, amount of dust and perfection of the room and the visiting benches, or maybe it's just the imagination and narcissism playing tricks, deciding to wait after all the selfish thoughts are through to remind you that it's a hospital and that hardly anyone in your family, including yourself, is fond of visit or staying in a hospital.

 

Or maybe it's the subconscious thought, deep in the unawares of the mind, and the forgotten, but stirred knowledge and memory that something is wrong. Maybe instinct, sixth-sense, and other needless names for the feeling of supernatural origins.

 

Then, in the midst of thinking, you wonder 'Why the hell am I just sitting here? Why am I not calling to tell anyone I am awake?'.

 

But you still don't know. Neither do you care, so you just continue with the painless, numb train of thought leading only to rhetorical thoughts and phrases, or lines, that would only end up to be called metaphors -- both incorrectly and correctly at times.

 

Thinking, and thinking, and thinking, almost to the point where your throat in tightening as if ready to let out a frustrated cry of sorts or a question to no one except the subconscious in the back of your mind, but you hold it back for it just isn't you and doesn't seem very practical to do, and wonder why nothing but the color 'Red' comes up in your mind.

 

Red.

 

And Anger. Hate. Love. Roses. Ribbons. Dresses. Dangerous skies, blood, apples, what purpose does red have?

 

Because at that moment, it's just red.

 

Only red, as anger swells up inside of you -- fear along with it -- when you're suddenly angry for something you can't consciously remember but know you should be angry -- angry as hell but more so worried. Red, all around the edges of your sight and yet the lime green light of the heart monitor is still visible and blinking.

 

A cloud, gray, silver, red, black, gold, all colors of some forgotten importance forge together to form the shape, shrouds around your mind and you suddenly think 'This isn't a dream' because you can feel the needle shifting slightly in your hand as you lift your entire arm for examination.

 

Wondering thoughts begin to fill your mind. 'Why isn't the heart monitor jumping rapidly?' or 'Just where the fuck is this? Which hospital?' and most importantly 'Where the fuck is everyone else?', despite the earlier thought and remembrance that hospitals are highly disliked in every corner of your family.

 

And the flat, sudden, and unexpected slam of 'Why the fuck is your mind talking in second person to yourself when it normally strays from that manner of thinking?'

 

Then I remember. It's a personal psychological effect of waking from a deep sleep to arrange thoughts correctly, created into a habit from when I was a child and prolonged and involuntary sleeps were not uncommon for me. And the memory of my condition strikes me harder than probably anything else I've been struck with. Possibly out of all the physical, mental, and emotional together.

 

Korosu slamming a blade, an ax to be more specific, into my stomach in a virtual reality, the screen changing to the blackness of 'Game Over' in the middle, whispering a curse, and then just the sudden surprise and scare of the shattering sound of something breaking and moving through the air in a mute swish of air.

 

Pain in the face and the hands as something sharp piercing the skins, the dull ring as the floor meets the back of my head and the agonizing feeling in the lungs, heart and stomach as an asthma attack decides to strike while the nerves seem to think that an ax actually entered my stomach.

 

The image of seeing the world spin as I rolled over onto my stomach and pushed myself up off the floor, examining the almost horrifying sight of my hands literally looking as if I'd taken a razor and began peeling the skins off flashed in my mind and made my eyes shift to my palms.

 

Scars.

 

The flesh was still pink and sensitive, which meant they would last awhile before finally fading, if they ever would.

 

Recurring thoughts -- the desensitized sensation of feeling a warm liquid seep around from somewhere on the side of my head to my brow, then drip to the on the clean skin on my back hand -- hearing a familiar voice in memory, though slightly distorted by the effect of shock and a buzz, call my name in a command.

 

And the subconscious fear when I was in a shock and loosing a battle to stay awake that never existed, of to whomever the voice belonged.

 

All of it.

 

Then all of the memories come to a halt after the ring of hitting the floor most likely headfirst as wills and strength disappear, the buzz mixes in with the ring loudly along with the comfortingly familiar voice of someone younger than you saying your name, nickname, three times. Being commanded to wake up, come back to conscious and to not leave her and then the sudden slight jerk of the shoulders as she shakes me then the loud, unnecessary comment on the blood.

 

Then nothing.

 

Just nothing.

 

No dreams of hearing someone talking to me in pitch black nothingness, no memory of having a hand take mine in my comatose state, no memory of hearing a chair slide up to the side of the bed.

 

Only the feeling that someone came into the room almost periodically and just stood there, no sounds of crying, talking, no feelings of being touched, no trace of it's presence, except for an unnerved and uncertain aura that was exuded.

 

The blinking of the heart monitor draws my attention once more, and I turn, only to lose my concentration on the flashing light to the sight of the time and date once more, coming to the realization that two months have gone by since darkness became the last thing remembered.

 

Two months.

 

Oh, fuck, “Two god damned months.”

 

And then all reason vanishes as the door opens and I'm what would be called as uncommunicative as a woman in white stares at me as if I'm transparent for a moment then suddenly has Cataphasia and says, “Fuck,” repeatedly. (1)

 

I don't blink. I don't move. I hardly breathe. I recognize the sound of my own voice as I suddenly speak in a rough, coarse and almost strained tone. “Profanity isn't very respective to patients.”

 

She shuts up and turns on her heel out the door. I can hear her mutter, “Awake from her utterly unresponsive condition,” at least twice before she leaves my range of hearing.

 

And, strangely, all I still want to do is find some clothes and get out of the hospital.

 

The emptiness and loneliness I feel is almost suffocating and the desire to hear someone's voice that I know and love is nearly at the surface beside the need to find out what the hell had happened since I was, for lack of a better term, gone. I need to know only one thing over everything -- including wanting to know what happened to Shi, Kara No, Kuroi.

 

Are Anissa, Balmung, Rena, and Shugo alright…?

 

(1) Cataphasia -- A speech disorder in which the same word or series of words is repeated involuntarily.(look it up at Dictionary. com, if you don't believe me)

 

There is the first installment of NEV.

Tell me what you though -- meaning review, please.

-Ice