Author: Reality Is

Title: Never Ending Void (I'll be calling it NEV most of the time cause I'm lazeh)

Disclaimer: I own diddlehy squat. Meaning I own nothing but Anissa, Kayane, their parents, Shi, Kara No, Kuroi, Korosu, Shizuka Na, Hitori De, and whoever the hell you may not recognize that may be a part of it. Shuyin, and Tengaki are the wonderful creation of Anissa's. But, wait! I don't own Shugo, Rena, or Balmung, nor do I make any profit off of them in any way! Mirelle, Ouka, Reki, and other mentions I might make occasionally for the hellabit are not my own to call and they are once more something I make absolutely no profit off of.

Rating: R for coarse language, violence, mature themes, psychological depression and adult moments.

Pairing: Same as in Sakura Blossoms but more strongly, I guess you could say.

Takes-Place: About two months after Chapter 11 of Sakura Blossoms, and two weeks before the Epilogue of Sakura Blossoms.

Summary: Betrayal has left them angry, confused, and with a thirst for revenge. A loss has left him bitter and desperate, seeking to no end to find a way to regain who's no longer there. The absence of a woman that had watched over them has left them all without a lead to keep them from falling apart and breaking down for fear of demoting themselves in one's suspiciously wise eyes which belong to the very one that they miss. In a sudden uprising, an enemy seeks to put an end to a killer many are addicted to and love… And thus begins the destruction of The World.

Note: The title may be subject to change still. I am pretty satisfied with the title, as of now, but my mind may decide on another. Bear with me if I do make a change.

Also,I am thinking about making an attempt to write the whole of NEV in first person view with every chapter being a different point of view for each person. It will be difficult but a challenge which I crave and will possibly end up producing much more of NEV chapter wise and word wise, meaning more to read and more for me to brag and boast about to my friends (we compete sometimes to see who writes the most and who is most original). Tell me if I should continue with chapter 1 of NEV in 1st person POV, or 3rd Person POV. Your feed back will be extremely appreciated.

-Prologue-

It's always been heard, said, and thought, that whenever waking up from an involuntary sleep, most likely a long one, you would feel unrested. With a loss of memory of how everything happened, and a certain numbness that is neither calming nor unsettling, as if some components in the mind just began to deteriorate.

Nothing makes sense, everything is a haze, and you're just thoughtless; looking around without the knowledge or instinct to move, say something, or to even panic when panicking is the more reasonable and likely choice at hand.

You're mouth goes dry, eyes aren't solidly open, but fully aware, you don't hear anything, not even the sound of your breathing or the sound of your heartbeat, and then, suddenly, everything snaps in your mind about your location.

The white walls, thin clothing, needle in the back of the hand, total silence except for the abrupt and haunting beeping of a heart monitor.

You're in a hospital, something that's all too familiar to you subconsciously but unfamiliar, as well. You don't remember going to a hospital many times at all, yet you know you've been there over more times during your childhood more than you can count on three pairs of hands.

Memory of the actual word 'comatose', along with the meaning, and names of colors suddenly pop up in your brain. Black, red, silver, yellow, blue, green, all of them suddenly are reinserted into your vocabulary.

You barely remember all the people you knew, all the people you disliked, all your mistakes, all the achievements made in life, and all the people that you've helped and that you've hurt. Family, friends, those you liked, everything.

All except the certain events that led up to being how you got there.

How you're sitting up in the white, discomfortingly sterile bed of a hospital, apparently late at night. The green light of the heart monitor is the only thing illuminating anything in the room yet the pulsing still regular, and without a change. Not fazed at all.

The only thing that comes up when focused upon in the mind is a flash of silver metal then a lurching of the stomach, where it hurts more than the consistent ache of your bones. Then the mental image of clear glass, shattered, broken, small and sharp occupies your thoughts.

Nothing makes sense and, for some reason, you know that there's a reason. One that will give you at least a small sudden sting of guilt in your heart and sudden worry. Maybe it's the cold fact that no one is with you, or the numb, unresponsive feeling of seeing the time '3:02' on a digital clock with the date 'November 30' underneath it. Or, possibly, the barely noticeable (but noticeable enough) amount of dust and perfection of the room and the visiting benches; or maybe it's just the imagination and narcissism of wanting everything to be centered around you. Playing tricks, deciding to wait after all the selfish thoughts are through to remind you that it's a hospital. After all, hardly anyone in your family, including yourself, is fond of visit or staying in a hospital.

Or maybe it's the subconscious thought, deep in the unawares of the mind, and the forgotten (but stirred) knowledge and memory that something is wrong. Maybe instinct, sixth-sense, and other needless names for the feeling of supernatural origins.

Then, in the midst of thinking, you wonder Why the hell am I just sitting here? Why am I not calling to tell anyone I am awake?.

But you still don't know. Nor do you care, so you just continue with the painless, numb train of thought leading only to rhetorical thoughts and phrases, or lines. One that would only end up to be called metaphors -- both incorrectly and correctly at times.

Thinking, and thinking, and thinking; almost to the point where your throat is tightening as if ready to let out a frustrated cry of sorts. Or a question to no one except the subconscious in the back of your mind and whoever might be in hearing range. If there is anyone. But you hold it back for it just isn't you and doesn't seem very practical to do, and instead start to wonder why nothing but the color 'Red' comes up in your mind.

Red.

And Anger. Hate. Love. Roses. Ribbons. Dresses. Dangerous skies, blood, apples, cherries, strawberries, pain, stop, alert, danger, what purpose does red have?

Because at that moment, it's just red.

Only red, as anger swells up inside of you -- fear along with it -- when you're suddenly angry for something you can't consciously remember but know you should be angry. Angry as hell, but more so worried. Red, all around the edges of your sight and yet the contradicting and complimentary lime green light of the heart monitor is still visible and blinking, causing a few spots of stars in the rim of your vision with its consistency.

A cloud, of gray, silver, red, black, gold, all colors of some forgotten importance, forged together to form the shape, shrouds around your mind. You suddenly think This isn't a dream because you can feel the needle shifting slightly in your hand as you lift your entire arm for examination and the tightness of the bandage wrapped around your head. Undoubtedly for some certain area of damage that you care not enough about to even begin wondering about when other thoughts begin to fight and push to the surface.

Wondering thoughts begin to fill your mind. Why isn't the heart monitor jumping rapidly? or Just where the fuck is this? Which hospital? and most importantly Where the fuck is everyone else?, despite the earlier thought and remembrance that hospitals are highly disliked in every corner of your family.

And the flat, sudden, and unexpected slam of Why the fuck is your mind talking in second person to yourself when it normally strays from that manner of thinking?

Then I remember. It's a personal psychological effect of waking from a deep sleep. An effective, and involuntary way to arrange my thoughts correctly. It was created into a habit from when I was a child. Prolonged, involuntary sleeps were not uncommon for me when I was a child. The memory and cause of my current condition strikes me harder than probably anything else I've been struck with. Possibly out of all the physical, mental, and emotional times altogether.

Korosu -- an enemy -- slamming a blade, an ax to be more specific, into my stomach in a virtual reality. I remember the screen changing to the blackness of 'Game Over' in the middle, myself whispering a curse, and the sudden surprise (and utter scare) of the sound of something shattering. Into countless pieces. All coming at me, and moving through the air in an almost muted swish of air.

Pain in the face and the hands as somethings that were sharp pierced the skins, the dull ring as the floor meets with the back of my head a split moment later and the agonizing feeling in the lungs, heart and stomach as an asthma attack decides to strike while my nerves seem to think that an ax actually entered my stomach.

The image of seeing the world spin as I rolled over onto my stomach and pushed myself up off the floor. I started examining the almost horrifying sight of my hands that literally looked as if I'd taken a razor, slashed at them savagely, and began peeling the rest of the skin off. The memory flashed by in my mind quickly and made me shift my eyes in the present to my palms and look at what was left of them.

Just scars.

The flesh was still pink and sensitive, which meant they would last awhile before finally fading, if they ever would.

Recurring thoughts -- the desensitized sensation of feeling a warm liquid seep around from somewhere on the side of my head to my brow. Only to drip on the clean skin on the back of my hand -- hearing a discomfortingly familiar voice in memory, though slightly distorted by the effect of shock and a buzz, call my name in a command. From some memory I was experiencing through the moment of being on the ground.

And the subconscious fear, when I was in a shock and loosing a battle fought to simply stay awake that never existed, of to whomever the voice belonged.

All of it.

Then all of the memories come to a halt after the ring of hitting the floor (most likely headfirst) as wills and strength disappear. The buzz mixes in with the ring loudly along with the comfortingly familiar voice of someone younger than me saying my name, nickname, three times. Being frantically told to wake up. Come back to consciousness and to not leave her. And then the sudden, slight jerk of the shoulders as she shakes me then the loud, unnecessary comment on the blood. It only seemed to send my heart into an even worse panic and only worsen the asthma attack I was experiencing.

Then nothing.

Absolute nothing.

No dreams of hearing someone talking to me through the pitch black nothingness; no memory of having a hand take mine in my comatose state, as if the action would comfort and coax me out of the deep sleep. There was no memory of hearing a chair slide up to the side of the bed and nothing of hearing two or more people try and make idle conversation as they waited and just... waited.

The only feeling I remember was that someone came into the room almost periodically. Maybe once every other week. Just to stand there and watch for ten minutes; no tears, talking, no touch, no trace he or she's presence. Nothing, except for an uneasy gaze.

The blinking of the heart monitor draws my attention once more, and I turn, only to lose my concentration on the flashing light. My eyes were drawn to the sight of the time and date once more, coming to the realization that two months have gone by. Two months since before darkness became the last thing remembered.

Two months.

Oh, fuck, “Two god damned months.”

And then all reason vanishes as the door opens and I'm what would be called as uncommunicative as a woman in white stares at me as if I'm transparent for a moment then suddenly reverts into panic and says, “Fuck,” repeatedly.

I don't blink. I don't move. I hardly even breathe; I slightly recognize the sound of my own voice as I suddenly speak in a rough, coarse, almost strained, and cold tone. “Profanity isn't very respective to patients.”

She shuts up for a split two seconda and turns on her heel out the door. I could hear her mutter, “Awake from her utterly unresponsive condition,” at least twice before she leaves my range of hearing.

And, strangely, all I still want to do is find some clothes and get out of the hospital. For I'm apparently breathing harder as I look around the room. I don't care if they want me in here for observation, check ups, questions, final touches on my wounds, whatever, I just want out. Out of these walls of white that seem to be closing in on me. Not claustrophobia wise, but as if narrowing down to single something out, drop a bullet on me that I know will shatter my nerves. Whether anyone would seem to realize it. Or suddenly help me come to a certain realization that I even know consciously that I should be arriving to; should have already come to, along with the haunting silence of being alone. Force me to face a reality that, somehow, I know I don't want.

The emptiness and loneliness I feel is almost suffocating. My desire to hear someone's voice that I know and love nearly rises to the surface beside the need to find out what the hell had happened while I was, for lack of a better term, gone. I need to know only one thing over everything -- including wanting to know what happened to Shi, Kara No, Kuroi.

Are Anissa, Balmung, Rena, and Shugo alright…?

The absolute only thing, memory, sounds, that I can't remember, but don't know, is that day and the voice I can't match with a face.

Kara No mentioning something about Silver and wind and black and seas; Shi telling me I could take down the reason many people were being rendered comatose; seeing the mysterious character Naunen; the Cnacehne; seeing Rena, Shugo, Tengaki and Balmung arrive in the dungeon as Anissa was the target for Korosu's ax; seeing them rush to her -- not me -- after I rammed her with my shoulder and pushed her away with my hands both. Saving my sister, feely the slightest bit of relief of her being alive, even as pain coursed through my body. Even as I could have sworn I was about to die, I was in such pain.

Hardly being regarded except with stares and silence as I was fading. Shock registering in their faces, paralyzed.

Everything else is a blank. Except for the knowledge and feeling that I care for those five, and that, even before I was in coma, a part of my past was missing from my memories. Before it all started in 'The World', and before Anissa and I were torn apart. Forced to live in different homes. Before my mother left.

But right now, that faceless voice I imagined or remembered calling my name commandingly is the link. The cause. The reason behind everything, and my current state of feeling nothing. My current state of being worth nothing.

Yet somehow, I know that finding that voice and remembering to whom it belonged to will probably never happen. It will never come to me because whatever I'm feeling in the back of my mind is telling me that I'm searching for a memory, or an item, or a person that I don't want to remember. That I didn't want to remember even back then.

Something I no longer wanted to be real to me.

It's killing me that it's so short, and I would make it longer, but then it feels as if I'm moving waayy too fast.
A cookie or cake for whoever can guess who the narrator above is.
Tell me what you though -- meaning review, please.
-realityis.

-//-
7/12/07
revised. ikilledallthose runon sentences, for you guys.
rehr.