| Doubt in Your Faith [closed to Raidou and Genma] | [May. 5th, 2009|02:18 pm] |
Directly follows All the Way Through
Hearing was the first sensation to come back this time. Hearing and pain. Feet pounding, harshly-drawn breaths, and the gentle clank of weapons. Shudders jolted through Genma, striking reverberations like a temple gong from his right side with every breath. It boiled into something else in the pit of his belly; oozed coldly from his hip down through his left leg to his dangling ankle; strangled like a serpent coiled tight around his neck...
And his hand.
Merciful Kanon, his left hand.
But it was only one hand, not two. That was wrong. It should be both hands, and his left side, not the right. Somehow it was all wrong, but there was that same crushing inability to draw a deep breath, that same sensation of being carried, the agony in his left hand... those were right.
There should have been more ANBU.
There was a jolt as the runner faltered, a pair of groans, one deeper pitched, one higher and stuttering away into whimpers.
That's Taisei, Genma thought. Taisei whimpering like the child he was, barely fourteen and looking younger. Carried by... what had that man's name been? Tomashiro? It was strange to be having this nightmare again, after all these years. He hadn't dreamt about the journey home since that first year back.
It was wrong.
They'd carried him on a stretcher, hadn't they? There had been medics, and stretchers...
The whimpering picked up again, throaty and hoarse.
The deeper voice groaned again. Spoke a word Genma couldn't quite catch.
He forced his eyes open, saw blurring orange light and fleeting shadows that made him feel sick. Saw russet hair and the back of an ear, before he had to shut them again.
The jolting stopped. The panting didn't. Harsh, desperate panting. High-pitched whimpers.
He twitched his head, tried to lift it.
Someone said his name. |
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