| Follow You Into Dark. [Closed to Raidou] |
[May. 7th, 2009|12:01 am] |
[Directly follows Doubt in Your Faith.]
When Raidou broke the surface of consciousness, it wasn't to find pain eating him alive. There was no metal on his wrists, no strain on his shoulders, no ground beneath his feet that he couldn't quite touch. The scent reaching his nose was medicinal, clinical, not the damp drift of gathering fog or the choking mess of sweat and fear and blood. He was warm and dry, and he couldn't feel anything beyond the heavy drag of exhaustion.
I'm dead, he thought, and found he didn't much care.
Blackness pulled him down.
When he stirred again, long hours later, it was to find something gently touching the right side of his jaw. Voices murmuring just outside of hearing. His eyebrows creased together slightly, a thin line drawing between them, and he turned his head away. The touch pulled back.
"--miashi-san?"
If he was dead, then he didn't have to answer. He didn't have to do anything until whatever it was went away. He could just drift, feeling something like slow fire coursing through his veins, and think of nothing.
Voices murmured again, low and soft. He tried not to listen.
"--other one's worse--"
"--out of surgery yet?"
"--don't know--"
Warmth wrapped in something like a plastic skin pressed against the right side of his throat. Vaguely, distantly, Raidou felt a dull thumping shiver beneath that touch. A double-beat, marking out a steady rhythm. It was being echoed by a quiet beeping.
"--amiashi-san? Can you hear--"
His pulse. That was his pulse.
How could he have a pulse?
"--you can hear--open your eyes--"
A bright hot jolt ran through his throat, spilling new energy into thread-worn pathways. He gasped, felt something tighten like a fist from his collarbones to his waist, and opened his eyes.
Bright green ones looked back. They crescented above a white mask, like a smile.
"Welcome back. We were starting to get a little--whoa!"
Raidou didn't hear the voice; he was already trying to twist away--and coming up short against soft bonds strapped around his wrists. The room was dimly lit, filled with machinery and a rising babble of words. Hands caught him by the right shoulder, the left flank, and pushed him flat. Something like very dim pain sparked along his back, rippled down his chest, grounded in his jaw. He shuddered, breath lurching.
Green-eyes leaned back into his narrowing field of vision. "Listen to me. I know it's confusing, but you need to listen. You're safe in Konoha. In hospital. You've been injured--"
It was a woman. She had red hair. Where was--what had--?
"Your partner was injured, too. He's in surgery--"
Genma.
Raidou tried to lunge back up and found no strength in his limbs. The blanket swathed over him slipped down, bunching up under restraining hands, showing bare skin and new bandages. IVs in both arms. It made no sense. Where was Sago? How could they be safe?
The green-eyed woman caught him under the chin, forcing his head up to look at her. "Focus on me, Namiashi-san. I need you to listen--"
"Mind his jaw, Mitsuki," broke in another. The green-eyed woman didn't look away.
"I know," she said. She wasn't smiling anymore. "I know it hurts, Na--Raidou. I know it's confusing. But you need to stop fighting us. We're trying to help you."
The Konoha-medics symbol was sewn into her white hat. Raidou stared at it, then back at her eyes. Scrambled to think around the mess of panic burning the drugs-haze away. Green-eyes. He tried to swallow, found his mouth bone dry, and coughed instead. Pain ripped into him.
"--oh Buddha. Mitzuki, get the fourth chakra--don't let him crash--"
Energy sank into his skin, bright green and achingly familiar. Healing chakra. So much like Genma's that he wanted to scream. Where was he?
Darkness swirled up for a while, stealing vision and thought. The medics--how could there be medics?--fought it back. Energy wound through burns and broken bones, flesh and nerves, spilling into muscles snapped tense enough to crack. The quiet beep following his pulse stuttered, flared, then finally levelled out.
When it was over, Raidou could barely keep his eyes open. If his body had any adrenaline left to offer, it was saving it for something more important than a panic attack over bright green eyes. He shivered, breathed against the tight grip of bandages, and tried to drag himself together. Called on everything and put it in one word.
"Genma."
The green-eyed medic brushed his hair back gently. "I'm sorry. We don't know yet."
Raidou closed his eyes.
Whatever it took.
It hadn't been enough. |
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