Isayama Yomi (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
she_is_ruin) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
damned_institute2012-03-21 02:20 pm
she_is_ruin) wrote in damned_institute2012-03-21 02:20 pm
Entry tags:
Nightshift 62: Morgue
If not for the cold seeping into her body, Yomi might not have bothered coming out of her slumber. The darkness in the depths of her mind was warm, safe; she was cradled in oblivion, comfortable, the same feeling she had had as a girl during dark winter nights when she had sat in front of the space heater and father had told her stories. Home. She didn’t want to let that sense of belonging go. She craved it in secret places she didn’t know she had.
But like the tide, the darkness was slowly receding to reveal what waited underneath--an onslaught of sensations that resembled a beach littered with thousands of shards of broken glass. There was no safe place to step on that dead soil. Every time Yomi’s mind brushed a sharp edge it released a starburst of pain, and she badly wanted to go back, to return to that sea of gentle nothingness where nothing could hurt her.
And she couldn’t hurt anyone.
Wait, why did that sound so familiar? Had she been the one to think that? Why… would that…
Her fingertips and toes were sore from the cold, and the discomfort strangling her nerves was what drew her back into her body more than anything else. Something wasn’t right. Many somethings. Her body hurt in unusual places, and there was something soft on her face that cast her shallow breaths back against her skin. Her heartbeat was audible in her ears. With the darkness all around her, it almost enough to convince her she was still in that comfortable place from before. But it wasn’t the same. Reality demanded attention and it nagged at her like the hum of a live wire.
You’re not--
What? Whose voice was that in her head? She wasn’t what?
It was with the fumbling of a disoriented child that Yomi ended up stretching her hand along the cool metal surface underneath her. It extended to the left and right of her, then up, up above her head and over her in a suffocatingly tight formation. She slapped at it softly. No give. There was still something covering her face and she worked it off until it pooled at her collar, letting in a caress of cold air. A sheet or a blanket, she thought.
The moment she opened her eyes properly, she opened them to an impenetrable blackness, and that confused her the most. Why? Why was she here and why did it hurt? It made sense if she couldn’t see anything, because you couldn’t see anything when you were--
Were…
Wait. Wait a minute!
When you’re dead. And you’re not dead. You’re still alive.
Yomi couldn’t breathe and although she opened her mouth to suck in air, nothing came. No, she couldn’t possibly be…? She dug her fingertips in with more purpose, but the metal of the chamber around her was solid and gave her no answers. A shrill sound left her and it was the sound of her own voice, high and rough with panic, that positively let her know that it was true, that this wasn’t death or even life after death. She was still alive. Oh god, alive… But no, no, no one could have survived what had happened. Her body had been broken and scattered, too much for the sesshouseki’s debilitated healing to repair. No human could have put her back together. Could be holding her together.
She wasn’t alone in the coffin-like unit, and that knowledge made tears spill from the corners of her eyes.
Bucking upward only served to bang her head against the shelf, but Yomi didn’t stop--couldn't, not with terror climbing her throat with burning hands. She thrashed, beating her fists against the sides and roof until she could feel her bones begin to bruise and heal and bruise all over again, the blows seeming to fall into a rhythm with her internal protests: no, no, no, no! That was when the screaming started. The screams were not sounds of a sane person claiming their second chance, but the wild shrieks of something that knew it shouldn’t exist. A part of Yomi felt that if she could scream hard enough, it would just go on and on and on and she would die from a lack of air before she had to face another moment as she was. Alive.
This couldn’t be happening, it couldn’t, not again. She couldn’t still be… here!
But like the tide, the darkness was slowly receding to reveal what waited underneath--an onslaught of sensations that resembled a beach littered with thousands of shards of broken glass. There was no safe place to step on that dead soil. Every time Yomi’s mind brushed a sharp edge it released a starburst of pain, and she badly wanted to go back, to return to that sea of gentle nothingness where nothing could hurt her.
And she couldn’t hurt anyone.
Wait, why did that sound so familiar? Had she been the one to think that? Why… would that…
Her fingertips and toes were sore from the cold, and the discomfort strangling her nerves was what drew her back into her body more than anything else. Something wasn’t right. Many somethings. Her body hurt in unusual places, and there was something soft on her face that cast her shallow breaths back against her skin. Her heartbeat was audible in her ears. With the darkness all around her, it almost enough to convince her she was still in that comfortable place from before. But it wasn’t the same. Reality demanded attention and it nagged at her like the hum of a live wire.
You’re not--
What? Whose voice was that in her head? She wasn’t what?
It was with the fumbling of a disoriented child that Yomi ended up stretching her hand along the cool metal surface underneath her. It extended to the left and right of her, then up, up above her head and over her in a suffocatingly tight formation. She slapped at it softly. No give. There was still something covering her face and she worked it off until it pooled at her collar, letting in a caress of cold air. A sheet or a blanket, she thought.
The moment she opened her eyes properly, she opened them to an impenetrable blackness, and that confused her the most. Why? Why was she here and why did it hurt? It made sense if she couldn’t see anything, because you couldn’t see anything when you were--
Were…
Wait. Wait a minute!
When you’re dead. And you’re not dead. You’re still alive.
Yomi couldn’t breathe and although she opened her mouth to suck in air, nothing came. No, she couldn’t possibly be…? She dug her fingertips in with more purpose, but the metal of the chamber around her was solid and gave her no answers. A shrill sound left her and it was the sound of her own voice, high and rough with panic, that positively let her know that it was true, that this wasn’t death or even life after death. She was still alive. Oh god, alive… But no, no, no one could have survived what had happened. Her body had been broken and scattered, too much for the sesshouseki’s debilitated healing to repair. No human could have put her back together. Could be holding her together.
She wasn’t alone in the coffin-like unit, and that knowledge made tears spill from the corners of her eyes.
Bucking upward only served to bang her head against the shelf, but Yomi didn’t stop--couldn't, not with terror climbing her throat with burning hands. She thrashed, beating her fists against the sides and roof until she could feel her bones begin to bruise and heal and bruise all over again, the blows seeming to fall into a rhythm with her internal protests: no, no, no, no! That was when the screaming started. The screams were not sounds of a sane person claiming their second chance, but the wild shrieks of something that knew it shouldn’t exist. A part of Yomi felt that if she could scream hard enough, it would just go on and on and on and she would die from a lack of air before she had to face another moment as she was. Alive.
This couldn’t be happening, it couldn’t, not again. She couldn’t still be… here!
no subject
She was not dead. She was in a morgue. She was in Landel’s Institute. These things, they were a hard truth, but she couldn’t deny them.
But the rest… Klavier’s reason for being there… no, that didn’t make any sense at all. There was a part of Yomi that badly wanted to retreat into the fog shrouding her mind; she bowed her head, sinking her teeth into her bottom lip so no sound could escape. In a place of death, there was so much relief around her. Klavier, relieved to find live people. Relieved to find her. And the others, relieved to find the girl. So happy that what had been done had not been permanent, that the girl had survived. If only her circumstance could call for such happiness. But every time she came back, things only became worse.
Yomi shook her head. No.
But there was a still a question that needed asking. There was something important in the man’s words, something that didn’t add up. He had… come looking for her body? Had he known she would be here, alive or dead? More to the point, he was free. The barriers in the Coliseum had had to have come down for him to be with her now.
“It happened,” she gasped. “The fight, it ended? You got out.” With her eyes opened wide, there seemed almost no contrast between her pupils and the violet of her irises.
She had to have died in that case, hadn’t she?