Day 44: breakfast

Yuffie had died.

No, really. Seriously. She had actually died. Bleeding all over the place, making a horrid, sticky mess and scaring the hell out of Suzaku; she remembered it clearly. Kind of. Sort of. Through the blood loss, the pain, and the visions. Through Aerith's voice whispering in her ear, Cloud's stricken eyes, and her own panic. As bad nights went, it had been Bad, capital B and all the trimmings, and oh, god. She sat, trembling on the edge of her bed, eyes closed and hands pressed hard over her racing heart. The by-play between Landel—Landel!—and Lydia barely even sunk in. There was nothing in the whole world, any world, that could prepare you for something like…

Had it all been some kind of hallucination?

Had she imagined the whole thing?

No… She didn't think so. Nightmarish or not, Yuffie knew reality. But if it had been real, how was she alive now? That kind of pain wasn't something you could just cook up, was it? She thought about it all the way to the cafeteria, drifting behind her nurse without focus or intent. Maybe if she tried to stay clinical, tried to step back… But she'd never been good at that when things got personal. And every time she closed her eyes or blinked, she swore that the scenes played back to her, like an overused commercial on a crappy channel on a crappy TV, in a run-down dump of an inn that smelled like mothballs and yesterday's breakfast.

The scent of blood and damp, rotted wood clogged her nose. Disgusted, Yuffie shoved her bowl of cereal—handed to her by a clucking Plucky—off to the side so that she could melt into her chair, palm heels scrubbing against her eyes. Too much. This was… Too much. She couldn't even paste a plastic smile on her face to make herself feel better. Her usual shield, the white noise of inane babble that could filter out almost any crisis, was in tatters all around her. Five minutes, she gave herself.

Five minutes (not) to think, five minutes to get her act together, because there was no way she could let herself shatter here. No way…

[Closed to Sheena]

[identity profile] bprd-fishman.livejournal.com 2009-09-23 11:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Abe tensed, jaws clenching together with the effort of not picking up the man and throwing him across the room into a tray of reconstituted eggs. All that and how he was being patronized by some idiot who'd probably never known grief and death so intimately. He twisted his wrist sharply and trapped the intruding hand in a tight grip.

Kaido Kio. Artist. Nothing of worth. The flashing headache only served to invigorate him.

"You didn't even know who she is," Abe hissed, the fingers of his other hand curling around the knife. His voice grew louder as he spoke, filling with uncharacteristic hate. "How dare you say what would be the best homage to her memory, how dare you say anything about her as if you knew what I've gone through? You aren't worthy to know her name, let alone talk about her like she was some mere...human!" He spat out the last word like it was a worm in his eggs. After their exposure and her death, he'd started to see why Nuada considered them mindless parasites at best.