Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Puzzles ❯ Shadow of Eyes ( Chapter 3 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: falsechaos 
The tomb robber's turn. Poor Ryou. He was commited by the voice in his head.
Anime/Manga: Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Psychological / Mystery / Angst | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 04.15.2003 | Pages: 3 | Words: 2.8K | Visits: 261 | Status: Work In Progress
The tomb robber's turn. Poor Ryou. He was commited by the voice in his head.
Anime/Manga: Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Psychological / Mystery / Angst | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 04.15.2003 | Pages: 3 | Words: 2.8K | Visits: 261 | Status: Work In Progress
"Shadow of Eyes"
[ Trap ] When your opponent Sets a Monster Card in face-down Defense Position, change it to face-up Attack Position. If the Monster Card has a Flip Effect, it is not activated.
=====
I hate taking my medication. I know, I know, it keeps me calm, suppresses that hateful voice in the back of my head, prevents me from hurting myself, prevents me from hurting others, etc, etc, ad nauseum. It means I'm weak. It means I wasn't able to conquer the flaws within me.
Dr. Valentine doesn't think so.
Dr. Valentine doesn't think on a lot of things.
My violent antisocial tendencies for one.
Dr. Valentine thinks its merely an overstated cry for help and attention. If I wanted help, I'd mention that dead cat I stuffed under the couch at home before coming here. If I wanted attention, I'd tell her (honestly) what I'm thinking right now. I don't think Valentine would like that very much.
I think I want to kill her. No real reason at all. Of all the people here, she is the least offensive. There are other people I could injure without fear of punishment. People I could watch injure themselves for me. The cutters are always fun to play with. I wonder if Dr. Valentine is a cutter. She always wears those blazers with long sleeves. Today's blazer is a violent royal purple. And today's matching skirt is exactly six inches from her crotch.
I'm very good at visual measurements.
The blazer is open, revealing a tight, button-up shirt. She has very large breasts. Curious. I don't want to see those. I want to see her wrists. I want to see if she cuts herself. I want to watch her cut herself. I don't think of her as sexual. I think of her as something that can bleed.
"Is there something you'd like to share, Ryou?"
I blink at her. She was supposed to be busy talking to the damn pharaoh. Violet eyes flick towards my wrist. I follow the rude gaze. Heh. I was rubbing my wrist again. I smile lazily at her. It's a wide, slow grin that exposes my teeth. I've practiced this grin. "Why, no, Dr. Valentine, nothing at all."
"Are you sure?" Her voice is low and reassuring. She's practiced this voice, I'm certain.
"Yes."
"Whenever you're ready, we're here to listen." I know she doesn't mean that. She knows she doesn't mean that. We both know that neither of us cares. She turns back to the pharaoh.
I continue to rub at my wrist.
Nothing special about this left wrist. No bulging scars or glaring discolorations of my skin. Just a faint purple blush along each side of the vein. Just six paperthin indentations. I never said I wasn't a cutter. I just enjoy it more in other people.
The first time I scarred myself was after an argument with my mother. I can't remember what we fought about or how long. I know I was punished, but not nearly as severely as my behavior *should* have been punished. I can't even remember just how my father managed to work a ceasefire between me and my mother. But I can remember thinking, 'I shouldn't hate my mother. That's very wrong of me.'
I was talking with my father. He had come home from work and found it in a state of... hn... 'disorder,' I suppose you can call it. He talked to mother. Can't remember, can't care less. He came upstairs to talk to me. Talk at me, more like. I had to do something with my hands. So I scratched. He told me to talked. I told him that I was afraid I hated my mother. At the time, I really *was* afraid that I hated my mother.
It's seems to be the sort of thing you would just *know,* right?
Apparently, worrying if you hate someone when you really don't want to hate them actually means that you don't really hate them at all. At least, that's what Dad said.
Perhaps I should mention that dear mother wasn't quite ripe in the noggin either? Abused as a child, a teenage, a young adult. It was no wonder she heard voices in her own head. She heard the voices of people who had hurt her. We talked about such things when I was younger. Between arguments. She would tell me that she heard voices, that sometimes she thought of killing herself. I couldn't have been more that twelve when she told me this.
She had to take medication for this.
It's no wonder I hate taking my own.
The other set of scars on my wrist, the paperthin indentations, I gave myself after mother decided that almost twenty years of marriage didn't mean much. She left, and took the only picture of Amane with her. I never knew my little sister. She died as an infant when I was too young to even understand the concept of death. No loss there.
Mother asked me if I wanted to go with her. Of course I couldn't. She looked at me and asked, "Who do you want to stay with?" A choice between her and my father. A choice between fighting with her or peace with my father. Touch choice. But why did it hurt so much to make?
It was the only time I had ever seen my father cry.
I cut myself that night. Nothing fancy, no attempt to end it all, I just sat on the floor in my bedroom and took my tool of choice out of my nailkit. A cuticle trimmer. Even a psychopath deserves nice nails. I didn't want to die. I just wanted to feel something. And I did. Six somethings. I licked the blood away. To be honest, I didn't even expect them to scar. I made certain the scratches were shallow.
I told them the cat did it.
They didn't believe me. I knew. They knew I knew. I didn't care.
Why all of this obsession over a woman who's been dead for two years? I don't know. The funeral was quick. She was buried next to Amane. I didn't see my father cry. That doesn't mean that he didn't. I didn't. I couldn't. I wonder if she ever heard my voice in her mind...
I think that's when it started.
When I started to hear that damn voice.
A faint whisper in the back of my mind. 'It's okay. You can cry. No one will hurt for showing your pain...' I hate that voice. Quiet, insistent in its own polite way. Telling me that it was okay to hurt and be weak and need help. That not everyone wanted to hurt me, that not everyone would betray me, that I was worthy of being loved.
Is it any wonder?
I can't feel things like other people. I knew that. I knew that I shouldn't be hearing things (alright, just *one* thing, but that's still one too many) in my head. So I didn't tell anyone. I went about my merry business, graduated high school, and entered a local community college. Father left for Egypt, finally getting the grant necessary from the museum he worked at. I moved out of the empty apartment we had shared after mother left us. I found another apartment with roommates to help share the cost of utilities and the like. One part time job was enough. I starting failing classes after the first two semesters, but that was okay.
It was a mess, but it was *my* mess. It's okay to wallow in your own emotional filth, isn't it? My life was crumbling comfortably around my ears. I had no real friends, an unhealthy obsession with my own blood, unresolved issues with my dead mother, an uncertain future, but who cared? I didn't. My father didn't know and thus, didn't care. My roommates certainly didn't.
The voice in my head did. 'It's possible to do this, to write the reports, to pass this class. I can do this.' I hate that voice. I hate the control it takes from me, the blanks spots in my mind, the time missing from my life. Most of all, I hate when it starts talking back to me. This wasn't a disassociated conscience I was dealing (not dealing, whatever) with. It thought, it reasoned, it did laundry.
I had scraped my knee while carrying in groceries. It was my turn to get them. I had to juggle the brown bags in one arm while fishing for the keys to the door with my other. I dropped the bags and lunged after them. Not that I cared about Takato's rice, but *my* steaks were in there. The groceries were picked up and carried in, the steaks put in the fridge, the rest left to rot until someone else put them up. I had noticed I was bleeding. Must have done it one the concrete outside.
So I licked it clean. I *like* the taste of my blood. The tiny bits of gravel were annoying, though. I had nipped off a sliver of torn flesh when it happened. A subtle graying of my thoughts. A dim echo in the back of my head. I passed into the darkness with drops of crimson clinging to my lips.
I had woken up in the laundry room. Not really. Really. I heard Takato's surprised exclamation of "Duuude!" and was startled out of whatever fugue I was hiding in. I was folding laundry. A large towel was in my hands. Shirts in a neat pile next to my boxers. Whites separated from denim. I had heard laughter. My own. Takato sat on an empty dryer next to the one I had been standing in front of, gathering more dry towels. His face had been so bright, his eyes shining.
"Dude," he repeated, "you really think I have a chance with Melissa?" He kicked his feet, but was careful not to hit the dryer.
I felt the corners of my mouth tilt into an unfamiliar expression. A smile. The first I had offered anyone in years. "Of course!" What was that I had heard in my voice? A warmth, honesty, and vibrancy I hadn't felt for such a long time.
Takato had looked at me and smiled.
I wanted to kill him then. The first real thing I had felt strongly about in months. The first thing I had been certain about in *years.* I wanted Takato to die. And I had wanted to be the one to *help* him die. All because of that smile. That damn smile, so full of the promise of lies.
My hands didn't let me. I had started to reach towards him, hands clenched into crude claws, but to my horror, I continued to fold the towel. Tuck, tuck, drape, drop. Another towel. Tuck, tuck, drape, drop. Towel. And again. My hands were buried in the wrong warmth. Why couldn't I reach towards the grinning idiot and rip at his throat, bury my hands in *that* warmth?
My mouth had merely continued to drop inane comments about Takato's value as a possible mate for his precious Melissa. Tongue and teeth had wrapped around words I didn't mean and didn't want to say and forced them past my lips where they dropped like precious stones into Takato's ears. Why couldn't I... why couldn't I stop this?!
'I'm sorry, but I can't let that happen.'
Those were the first words that damnable voice had spoken to me. Directly, that is. Addressing me as a separate entity, that is. It had forced me into the darkness after that.
That had been the first time, but it hadn't been the last. My grades went back up. My roommates opened up to me. I picked out a major in college and a rough idea of a future lay before me. Life was looking up and I had wanted nothing to do with it. I was a prisoner, held captive by that gentle tormenter, released only when I (we?) were far away from any people.
'Let me out, let me go, give me back my life!'
'It's alright. I won't let anyone hurt you. Including yourself.'
By that little exchange, I took it as okay to hurt *other* people. So one night when the little voice was safely asleep in my head, I had snuck towards the kitchen. I picked out a nice, sharp knife. I tested the edge with my thumb. Giggled under my breath when it nicked me. Perfect. It'll go through his throat faster.
Takato had slept on the couch that night. Passed out from playing video games after a successful date with Melissa. Might as well let him go out with a smile on his face, right? I can remember how beautiful he looked then. Dark brown bangs fanned across his brow and eyes. Legs and arms about the couch in a graceful sprawl. Head thrown back, throat glowing in the dull flicker of the tv. He was only beautiful because I was about to kill him.
"NO!"
My own voice, shrieking at me to stop.
Takato eyes had snapped open and he had looked up to stare at me standing over him.
"LET ME KILL HIM!"
My own voice, shrieking at me to continue.
Stupid boy didn't even move when I began to argue with the voice in my head. He had just sat there with that blissfully stupid look of shock on his face. If knowledge were dangerous, surely he had been the least harmful person on the planet.
"Stop this, leave him alone!"
"Let... me... kill... him!"
"I can't! Stop!"
"Get out of me! LET ME KILL HIM!"
"NO!"
"Ryou! What the hell are you doing, man?!"
That was when the other two idiots I cohabitated with decided to wake up. They rushed over to me, pried the knife from my fingers, crushed me down to the floor. I snapped at them with my teeth and clawed at them with my nails. Someone yelped in pain. A hand pulled away quickly from my mouth. I think I left one of them with scars. I broke free of them and rushed out of the apartment, almost tumbling down the stairs.
Darkness snapped and clawed at my mind. Gentle tormentor that the voice was, it did nothing to inflict pain upon me. It merely let me tear myself down. Down and down into darkness...
It had been a really stupid thing to do in retrospect. Waiting to kill him. Shouldn't have stopped and gawked at his pretty throat. Should have killed him fast.
I woke up in here, tied up in one of those damn jackets, and almost stupid from the medication. It was almost worth the look on their faces when I told them I had been admitted here by the voice in my head. Almost. I tried to escape the next morning. Bit one of the guards. Licked his blood off my lips. Grinned at him and ran out.
I let them catch me. I let them catch me every time.
I'm better now. Really. I've stopped with the pretense. Screw conforming to normality. I can *feel* things now. The rush of blood in my veins as I run laughing down the hallways, daring the guards to catch me *this* time, reminding them with the subtle taunt that I *let* them catch me in the end. The feeling of wind in my hair whenever I sit on the roof of the hospital, catching pigeons and killing them. The thrill of knowing that I'm not like the others.
The voice tells me I should cooperate with the doctors, let them help me. I haven't been taking my medication lately. Of course its going to get louder. I don't care. I have more freedom here than I've ever
"Ryou? Our group session is over for today. I'll see you tomorrow."
I blink. Oh. Group. Present reality. Valentine and her little pet pharaoh.
We all rise to our feet and are escorted back to our individual rooms. I sneak a look at the nurse following me. Tall woman, sturdy arms and legs, strong face. Would be luck to be called 'handsome.' Haven't played with *her* in a while. I stop in my tracks and turn around to grin at her. Her eyes narrow. She knows the game.
"Hey, Armstrong." I pause a moment, narrow my eyes and allow my grin to grow. "Catch me."
I take off running down the hallway, bare feet slapping against the floor. The spiky white hair I'm so proud of trails behind my head. I wonder if I look like a comet. Armstrong bellows and takes after me. I'll let her catch me.
Eventually.
Maybe.
Isn't sanity fun?
[ Trap ] When your opponent Sets a Monster Card in face-down Defense Position, change it to face-up Attack Position. If the Monster Card has a Flip Effect, it is not activated.
=====
I hate taking my medication. I know, I know, it keeps me calm, suppresses that hateful voice in the back of my head, prevents me from hurting myself, prevents me from hurting others, etc, etc, ad nauseum. It means I'm weak. It means I wasn't able to conquer the flaws within me.
Dr. Valentine doesn't think so.
Dr. Valentine doesn't think on a lot of things.
My violent antisocial tendencies for one.
Dr. Valentine thinks its merely an overstated cry for help and attention. If I wanted help, I'd mention that dead cat I stuffed under the couch at home before coming here. If I wanted attention, I'd tell her (honestly) what I'm thinking right now. I don't think Valentine would like that very much.
I think I want to kill her. No real reason at all. Of all the people here, she is the least offensive. There are other people I could injure without fear of punishment. People I could watch injure themselves for me. The cutters are always fun to play with. I wonder if Dr. Valentine is a cutter. She always wears those blazers with long sleeves. Today's blazer is a violent royal purple. And today's matching skirt is exactly six inches from her crotch.
I'm very good at visual measurements.
The blazer is open, revealing a tight, button-up shirt. She has very large breasts. Curious. I don't want to see those. I want to see her wrists. I want to see if she cuts herself. I want to watch her cut herself. I don't think of her as sexual. I think of her as something that can bleed.
"Is there something you'd like to share, Ryou?"
I blink at her. She was supposed to be busy talking to the damn pharaoh. Violet eyes flick towards my wrist. I follow the rude gaze. Heh. I was rubbing my wrist again. I smile lazily at her. It's a wide, slow grin that exposes my teeth. I've practiced this grin. "Why, no, Dr. Valentine, nothing at all."
"Are you sure?" Her voice is low and reassuring. She's practiced this voice, I'm certain.
"Yes."
"Whenever you're ready, we're here to listen." I know she doesn't mean that. She knows she doesn't mean that. We both know that neither of us cares. She turns back to the pharaoh.
I continue to rub at my wrist.
Nothing special about this left wrist. No bulging scars or glaring discolorations of my skin. Just a faint purple blush along each side of the vein. Just six paperthin indentations. I never said I wasn't a cutter. I just enjoy it more in other people.
The first time I scarred myself was after an argument with my mother. I can't remember what we fought about or how long. I know I was punished, but not nearly as severely as my behavior *should* have been punished. I can't even remember just how my father managed to work a ceasefire between me and my mother. But I can remember thinking, 'I shouldn't hate my mother. That's very wrong of me.'
I was talking with my father. He had come home from work and found it in a state of... hn... 'disorder,' I suppose you can call it. He talked to mother. Can't remember, can't care less. He came upstairs to talk to me. Talk at me, more like. I had to do something with my hands. So I scratched. He told me to talked. I told him that I was afraid I hated my mother. At the time, I really *was* afraid that I hated my mother.
It's seems to be the sort of thing you would just *know,* right?
Apparently, worrying if you hate someone when you really don't want to hate them actually means that you don't really hate them at all. At least, that's what Dad said.
Perhaps I should mention that dear mother wasn't quite ripe in the noggin either? Abused as a child, a teenage, a young adult. It was no wonder she heard voices in her own head. She heard the voices of people who had hurt her. We talked about such things when I was younger. Between arguments. She would tell me that she heard voices, that sometimes she thought of killing herself. I couldn't have been more that twelve when she told me this.
She had to take medication for this.
It's no wonder I hate taking my own.
The other set of scars on my wrist, the paperthin indentations, I gave myself after mother decided that almost twenty years of marriage didn't mean much. She left, and took the only picture of Amane with her. I never knew my little sister. She died as an infant when I was too young to even understand the concept of death. No loss there.
Mother asked me if I wanted to go with her. Of course I couldn't. She looked at me and asked, "Who do you want to stay with?" A choice between her and my father. A choice between fighting with her or peace with my father. Touch choice. But why did it hurt so much to make?
It was the only time I had ever seen my father cry.
I cut myself that night. Nothing fancy, no attempt to end it all, I just sat on the floor in my bedroom and took my tool of choice out of my nailkit. A cuticle trimmer. Even a psychopath deserves nice nails. I didn't want to die. I just wanted to feel something. And I did. Six somethings. I licked the blood away. To be honest, I didn't even expect them to scar. I made certain the scratches were shallow.
I told them the cat did it.
They didn't believe me. I knew. They knew I knew. I didn't care.
Why all of this obsession over a woman who's been dead for two years? I don't know. The funeral was quick. She was buried next to Amane. I didn't see my father cry. That doesn't mean that he didn't. I didn't. I couldn't. I wonder if she ever heard my voice in her mind...
I think that's when it started.
When I started to hear that damn voice.
A faint whisper in the back of my mind. 'It's okay. You can cry. No one will hurt for showing your pain...' I hate that voice. Quiet, insistent in its own polite way. Telling me that it was okay to hurt and be weak and need help. That not everyone wanted to hurt me, that not everyone would betray me, that I was worthy of being loved.
Is it any wonder?
I can't feel things like other people. I knew that. I knew that I shouldn't be hearing things (alright, just *one* thing, but that's still one too many) in my head. So I didn't tell anyone. I went about my merry business, graduated high school, and entered a local community college. Father left for Egypt, finally getting the grant necessary from the museum he worked at. I moved out of the empty apartment we had shared after mother left us. I found another apartment with roommates to help share the cost of utilities and the like. One part time job was enough. I starting failing classes after the first two semesters, but that was okay.
It was a mess, but it was *my* mess. It's okay to wallow in your own emotional filth, isn't it? My life was crumbling comfortably around my ears. I had no real friends, an unhealthy obsession with my own blood, unresolved issues with my dead mother, an uncertain future, but who cared? I didn't. My father didn't know and thus, didn't care. My roommates certainly didn't.
The voice in my head did. 'It's possible to do this, to write the reports, to pass this class. I can do this.' I hate that voice. I hate the control it takes from me, the blanks spots in my mind, the time missing from my life. Most of all, I hate when it starts talking back to me. This wasn't a disassociated conscience I was dealing (not dealing, whatever) with. It thought, it reasoned, it did laundry.
I had scraped my knee while carrying in groceries. It was my turn to get them. I had to juggle the brown bags in one arm while fishing for the keys to the door with my other. I dropped the bags and lunged after them. Not that I cared about Takato's rice, but *my* steaks were in there. The groceries were picked up and carried in, the steaks put in the fridge, the rest left to rot until someone else put them up. I had noticed I was bleeding. Must have done it one the concrete outside.
So I licked it clean. I *like* the taste of my blood. The tiny bits of gravel were annoying, though. I had nipped off a sliver of torn flesh when it happened. A subtle graying of my thoughts. A dim echo in the back of my head. I passed into the darkness with drops of crimson clinging to my lips.
I had woken up in the laundry room. Not really. Really. I heard Takato's surprised exclamation of "Duuude!" and was startled out of whatever fugue I was hiding in. I was folding laundry. A large towel was in my hands. Shirts in a neat pile next to my boxers. Whites separated from denim. I had heard laughter. My own. Takato sat on an empty dryer next to the one I had been standing in front of, gathering more dry towels. His face had been so bright, his eyes shining.
"Dude," he repeated, "you really think I have a chance with Melissa?" He kicked his feet, but was careful not to hit the dryer.
I felt the corners of my mouth tilt into an unfamiliar expression. A smile. The first I had offered anyone in years. "Of course!" What was that I had heard in my voice? A warmth, honesty, and vibrancy I hadn't felt for such a long time.
Takato had looked at me and smiled.
I wanted to kill him then. The first real thing I had felt strongly about in months. The first thing I had been certain about in *years.* I wanted Takato to die. And I had wanted to be the one to *help* him die. All because of that smile. That damn smile, so full of the promise of lies.
My hands didn't let me. I had started to reach towards him, hands clenched into crude claws, but to my horror, I continued to fold the towel. Tuck, tuck, drape, drop. Another towel. Tuck, tuck, drape, drop. Towel. And again. My hands were buried in the wrong warmth. Why couldn't I reach towards the grinning idiot and rip at his throat, bury my hands in *that* warmth?
My mouth had merely continued to drop inane comments about Takato's value as a possible mate for his precious Melissa. Tongue and teeth had wrapped around words I didn't mean and didn't want to say and forced them past my lips where they dropped like precious stones into Takato's ears. Why couldn't I... why couldn't I stop this?!
'I'm sorry, but I can't let that happen.'
Those were the first words that damnable voice had spoken to me. Directly, that is. Addressing me as a separate entity, that is. It had forced me into the darkness after that.
That had been the first time, but it hadn't been the last. My grades went back up. My roommates opened up to me. I picked out a major in college and a rough idea of a future lay before me. Life was looking up and I had wanted nothing to do with it. I was a prisoner, held captive by that gentle tormenter, released only when I (we?) were far away from any people.
'Let me out, let me go, give me back my life!'
'It's alright. I won't let anyone hurt you. Including yourself.'
By that little exchange, I took it as okay to hurt *other* people. So one night when the little voice was safely asleep in my head, I had snuck towards the kitchen. I picked out a nice, sharp knife. I tested the edge with my thumb. Giggled under my breath when it nicked me. Perfect. It'll go through his throat faster.
Takato had slept on the couch that night. Passed out from playing video games after a successful date with Melissa. Might as well let him go out with a smile on his face, right? I can remember how beautiful he looked then. Dark brown bangs fanned across his brow and eyes. Legs and arms about the couch in a graceful sprawl. Head thrown back, throat glowing in the dull flicker of the tv. He was only beautiful because I was about to kill him.
"NO!"
My own voice, shrieking at me to stop.
Takato eyes had snapped open and he had looked up to stare at me standing over him.
"LET ME KILL HIM!"
My own voice, shrieking at me to continue.
Stupid boy didn't even move when I began to argue with the voice in my head. He had just sat there with that blissfully stupid look of shock on his face. If knowledge were dangerous, surely he had been the least harmful person on the planet.
"Stop this, leave him alone!"
"Let... me... kill... him!"
"I can't! Stop!"
"Get out of me! LET ME KILL HIM!"
"NO!"
"Ryou! What the hell are you doing, man?!"
That was when the other two idiots I cohabitated with decided to wake up. They rushed over to me, pried the knife from my fingers, crushed me down to the floor. I snapped at them with my teeth and clawed at them with my nails. Someone yelped in pain. A hand pulled away quickly from my mouth. I think I left one of them with scars. I broke free of them and rushed out of the apartment, almost tumbling down the stairs.
Darkness snapped and clawed at my mind. Gentle tormentor that the voice was, it did nothing to inflict pain upon me. It merely let me tear myself down. Down and down into darkness...
It had been a really stupid thing to do in retrospect. Waiting to kill him. Shouldn't have stopped and gawked at his pretty throat. Should have killed him fast.
I woke up in here, tied up in one of those damn jackets, and almost stupid from the medication. It was almost worth the look on their faces when I told them I had been admitted here by the voice in my head. Almost. I tried to escape the next morning. Bit one of the guards. Licked his blood off my lips. Grinned at him and ran out.
I let them catch me. I let them catch me every time.
I'm better now. Really. I've stopped with the pretense. Screw conforming to normality. I can *feel* things now. The rush of blood in my veins as I run laughing down the hallways, daring the guards to catch me *this* time, reminding them with the subtle taunt that I *let* them catch me in the end. The feeling of wind in my hair whenever I sit on the roof of the hospital, catching pigeons and killing them. The thrill of knowing that I'm not like the others.
The voice tells me I should cooperate with the doctors, let them help me. I haven't been taking my medication lately. Of course its going to get louder. I don't care. I have more freedom here than I've ever
"Ryou? Our group session is over for today. I'll see you tomorrow."
I blink. Oh. Group. Present reality. Valentine and her little pet pharaoh.
We all rise to our feet and are escorted back to our individual rooms. I sneak a look at the nurse following me. Tall woman, sturdy arms and legs, strong face. Would be luck to be called 'handsome.' Haven't played with *her* in a while. I stop in my tracks and turn around to grin at her. Her eyes narrow. She knows the game.
"Hey, Armstrong." I pause a moment, narrow my eyes and allow my grin to grow. "Catch me."
I take off running down the hallway, bare feet slapping against the floor. The spiky white hair I'm so proud of trails behind my head. I wonder if I look like a comet. Armstrong bellows and takes after me. I'll let her catch me.
Eventually.
Maybe.
Isn't sanity fun?