I once again praise Dragonwings144 for the ending to this. I mean, the open ended solution-lacking crap was my idea, but the imagery for the ending was totally inspired by her. To all who stuck by me through this bizarre experiment, thank you; really. I know its not very well developed plot-wise and I really don’t have an excuse as to why it is, other than that the story was meant to delve into some different writing styles and some deep characterizations. Seriously, the people who read this are my heroes.

This is for the people who care even a little bit about what happens in the creators of the stories they read’s lives. Up until just recently, I had been contemplating some very drastic things. I’m close to an extremely gigantic step in my life, and I felt overwhelmed and depressed about the amount of work I had to do from now until then. Normally, since this IS a multichapter fic, I would have lost interest a long time ago. But for some reason this thing kept screeching at me to finish it, and I did. I really hope its not too half assed, but I would like to point out that this story, although wonderful to letting out my frustrations, was just the tar icing on a very moldy cake. So much crap to do, and this to top it off. But I’m glad I finished it, I really am.

So…here. XD

-0-

Lark

Hearing Piper leave the lab, I closed my eyes for a brief second. There, waiting for me on the inside of my eyelids was a flashback of the beginning of the first year she brought me to the mansion. After a considerably long session, I emerged from the MFE pod looking at Piper’s astonishingly curious face staring back at me. Although I didn’t want her to see my unconditioned body and my already thinning hair, all of that took a back seat to the fact that I was there in the first place. At once I asked her where I was and how long I had been out.

Kiros, and four months, she told me.

She helped my weak body dress itself in loose clothes that smelled like cabbage, and then enlightened me on everything. Or tried to; though it only took an hour to explain, it took me years to understand even an inkling. She took me from my fortress on the day of the raid, and Dark Ace made us leave him behind. She brought me here because she wanted to rescue me from my inexorable execution; all because she simply wanted a teacher. I remember staring at her with my sunken mouth half open, listening to her in staggered stillness as she explained why she had done what she did. Most of it was some crap about second chances and how her virtues didn’t agree with what was going to happen to me. But I tuned in when she started talking about me teaching her.

She had always used her gifts for good. Mine, not so much.

I wasn’t eager to comply, let me tell you. Many times I thought about taking her heliscooter and a bunch of epinephrine needles with me, leaving her behind on Kiros while I was free from the task she needed me to help her complete. It was nice to think about, but who was I really kidding? Without the MFE chamber I would drop out of the sky like a dead insect. I couldn’t live on adrenaline serum for the rest of my presumably short life. I had no resources.

And I was tired. So tired. As much as I hated being around this girl whom I had so many mixed feelings about, I was too physically weak to run. It would take time to get used to having a student.

The first year was hard. So hard that sometimes I contemplated shooting myself. I’m sure she did the same.

But eventually, we adapted to each other.

We do crazy things to achieve the things we’re meant to have, I guess.

It occurred to me some time after I woke up from my first MFE session on Kiros that I already should have known that Piper was planning something. Even though I was much too ill to retreat to my lab in the time before the raid, something was amiss in my fortress. My senses had to have tingled as her graceful dark fingers held my notes and written experiments in her hands. I should have known. Yet, when I saw her in the hanger that day, my expectancy of everything was thrown askew; the result of the biggest curve ball ever thrown at me.

The day we realized that our opinions of each other had completely changed, it was the same old argument. I hadn’t showered in weeks. Even I could smell my own odor, but I refused to bathe. Piper was experimenting with two rare lunar crystals and was trying to mold them together in one. I stood over her with my arms crossed across my chest watching her work, the both of us trying hard not to say anything about the smell that was now wafting through the room.

Finally, she dropped the crystals unceremoniously back onto the desk and turned to me with a glare.

“Why have you stopped?” I asked, returning the look she gave me.

“You need to take a bath, that’s why.” She said shortly.

I narrowed my eyes. I didn’t like being commanded to do anything. I agreed that I stank, but each time I showered, my dark tresses came out by the roots in between my fingers.

“I don’t need to do anything. Now get back to work.”

“You smell positively awful. I know you don’t like it, but you need to take care of your body, and that includes washing it.”

I resisted grabbing one of the crystals on the desk and striking the back of her head with it.

“You smell so bad I can’t concentrate.” She said, looking away.

“If you’re really that distracted by something so trivial, then you can screw off.” I sneered.

Piper rose in a flash from her chair and grabbed me by the collar of my shirt. My physical strength was abysmal compared to hers, but I still stared at her with unruffled contempt as her fist gripped my clothes.

“You’re taking a fucking bath.”

That’s when she started dragging me. And that’s when I started screaming. I honestly don’t know what truly induced it; all I know is that I snapped a little bit. All sorts of things flew from my mouth; from mindless obscenities to threats about leaving and never coming back. She picked me up roughly when we came to the winding staircase, and was undeterred when I began to hit and scratch her. Like a feline on crack I tried to escape from her hold on me. We reached my bathroom, and she roughly put me down on the cold tile floor, making sure to have a good grasp on my wrist so I couldn’t get away. She jiggled the faucet of the bathtub so it began to pour steaming hot water. I yelled and flailed like a maniac.

Finally she couldn’t take it anymore and straddled me while holding down my arms on either side. I stopped my mayhem, but I breathed heavily through my nose. I looked at this girl on top of me, holding me down so that I didn’t do any damage to myself as I threw that unbelievably childish tantrum. I barely remember what I was having a fit about. All I completely recollected was the seconds passing by, Piper still on top of me with small delicate beads of her sweat dripping off into my face as we both reeled from the one sided fight, completely exhausted.

I looked into her eyes and she looked into mine. I couldn’t comprehend what I saw in those eyes, but whatever it was; it helped slow down both my breathing and the violent pulsing of my heart.

The bath was ready. Welcoming steam rose off of the surface of the water. We must have stayed in that position for at least ten whole minutes as the tub filled up. Piper got off of me, and when I didn’t move, she helped me sit up. As delicately as she could, she helped me out of my clothes, and I recalled blushing as my nipples became rose-red when they hit the air. It dimly comforted me how not once did she become flustered as she exposed my pale gangly naked form. But looking back, I wonder if it was because at that moment she didn’t see me as anything else but a sick young woman who needed to be cared for. Gripping her forearms and trying hard to ignore the way my small breasts were rubbing against the smooth threads of her clothes, she led me over to the fresh bath. The scalding water stung my skin, but I didn’t make any noise as she helped me lower myself into the tub.

This girl.

This girl and her unfathomable abilities.

Neck deep in the torrid soapy water, I stared at a fatigued Piper who still knelt next to my bath. My face was carved in a tired look of disbelief. Much like the appearance of someone who had just seen a drunken polar bear riding a tricycle. My outburst had taught her that beneath all of the layers of evil empire bullshit, I was a girl barely older than herself, sick in the body and even the mind sometimes. Just a girl. That’s all.

And I learned that she was truly a good person. Like I said before, I can’t hate good people. Only a good person would sit there and hold me in the middle of the night as surge after surge of blood would leak from my mouth and onto my chin. Or refrain from even sniggering as she changed my soiled sheets; stained yellow at least once a month when my body lost all control.

Several times, as we sweated together in the collected humidity of the bathroom, we locked eyes. Using her tangerine irises she would silently ask if she should leave, and I would silently tell her to do whatever the hell that she wanted.

It was not one of those shared epiphanies. We both still went to bed angry and sore at each other that night. But not because we hated each other.

Back in the present, I opened my eyes and the memory vanished like a wisp of black smoke.

That reminded me, my pipe was still burning.

I took one last hit, savoring the sweet smoke that filled my lungs. I would need a good high to deal with Piper. She could be sweet girl, but when she was emotional even I tried to steer clear. But this wasn’t something we could both pretend wasn’t happening. It would be like pretending that the almost constant vomit and bleeding was normal. I was tired of the way she treated me; the way she treated herself.

I dumped the rest of the herb out the window and watched the ashy remnants fall several stories. I set the pipe down on Piper’s desk, and made the difficult journey up the stairs to Piper’s room.

-0-

Each step up the staircase was like every string on my imprisoned minion Ravess’s violin wrapping themselves around my legs and pulling taut until it broke the skin. My room was closer to the stairs than Piper’s was. I trapped moans from the pain in the middle of my throat to make sure that she didn’t hear such sounds. Piper’s care was genuine, and it seemed to repair my broken state somewhat at first. But what did she see me as?

Nothing else but a sick child in a twenty year old’s body, probably.

I hated quarrelling with Piper. I hated when something truly serious popped up and threatened our relationship like what happened previously in the lab. Our interactions seemed so natural one moment, and the next it was like our first day on Kiros. The tall but somehow modest door to her room was in sight, and I slowly made my way over. The door was only halfway closed, and I gently pushed it open. Piper sat on her bed, facing away from me. Her back was hunched as she stared out her dusty window, shoulders stiff save for their quivering movements.

Well shit. She was crying.

Tears weren’t very common between either of us. Our faces were usually hard and stony, only dropping the statue-esque exterior when I made a dirty joke or caustic comment. She sat over there on her well made bed, pretending to be unaware that I had entered, but I knew better.

“Piper?” I said without hesitation.

It would take more than my dark skinned friend’s tears to make me want to vacillate.

“What?” She said shortly. Her back was to me, but I saw her hands fly up to her face and wipe away tears that I couldn’t see but I knew were there.

“Tell me why you’re upset.”

“I thought it would’ve been obvious.” She said thickly.

“Oh I have an idea, but I never liked to assume things.”

I gingerly sat on the corner of her bed. She scooted farther away.

“…Why do you insist on trying to kill yourself?” She said barely above a whisper.

“Show’s how much you know.” I said. No doubt the words were cold and snappish.

“Just because I’m not wild about living another twenty years like this I’m suddenly suicidal?”

“No, but-”

“‘But’ nothing. You try and spend one day in my body, Piper. Try it, and then say that I’m wrong for feeling the way I do.”

Piper didn’t say anything. But I continued.

“I teach you, I talk to you, I let you see me when I’m at my weakest. What more do you want from me?”

“I want you to live!” She said while turning her head to look at me. There was fire in her orange eyes, fire that was tired of what I was saying and wanted to burn my realistic attitude to the ground.

“You think I don’t want that?” I said, standing up and raising my voice slightly; something I rarely did when I wasn't intent on physically inducing some hell.

“You think I don’t want to quit those fucking sessions? You think I don’t want to quit bleeding out of my ass?”

Piper narrowed her eyes and turned away, refusing to look at me. My face softened, and I realized that a full out row was apparently not going to be the right way to go about this.

“Each day I climb out of bed is for your sake, Piper.” I wasn’t good at saying these things…but I figured that it was my best shot to finding out what was going on with her. Something wasn’t right, and it was up to the both of us to find out what it was, and fix it.

Or at least acknowledge it, and not let it linger between us.

“But…I guess, for some reason that isn’t good enough for you.”

She gulped loudly, probably swallowing back an ugly retort. Her next string of words was not ugly, though. In fact they were in a manner that I wanted to hear. Brutally honest, revealing. Even risky. And so simple. Letting such feelings lose is dangerous sometimes. But unlike the backstabbing cuss I used to be, I had no more desire to rip out the girl’s spine and use it to decorate my wall of accomplishments.

“I need you.” She said. The words must have scraped her throat on the way out. But that was fine with me. At least she was admitting to this, although I already knew that she felt that way.

And then, she said:

“And I just don’t understand why you think the way that you do.”

Somewhere, in that slender supposedly do-good virtuous crap-filled body of hers, there was a little monster that was trying to piss me off. Trying to pin the unspeakably insane elements on me, because we all know how easy that is. I used to be Master Cyclonis, deadly and feared, and for the longest time successful at what my regime was trying to do. There was nothing left for me to say, right? After my forces killed off thousands of people and destroyed so many ways of life, there was absolutely nothing left for me to say, right?

Right?

My hand bolted away from me and held her face firmly in my palm. She knew not to struggle when I acted like this. On a regular basis I was rigid and solidly hard to please, but Piper’s constant care for me led me away from my lethal demeanor that used to be delicious and cold as a metal key against a tongue. As luck would have it, she coaxed both the decent and the toxicity out of me. I brought my face down to her level, my colorless hand still gripping her dark jaw. My words were careful and delicate. But not ones that caressed; ones that pierced like arrows. It was time to entice those pesky monsters out of my friend, whether she liked to regard them or not.

“The way I think is not complicated, Piper. I hate, I love, I survive. That is all. You want to try and delve deeper? Be my guest, but I trust you won’t get too far.” I tilted my head in mock curiosity. “But what most intrigues me is not how I think, but how you think.”

I let go of her face with a slight jerk.

I looked down at her, my eyes flaring. “Such a perfect life, Piper. Set before you like a slab of meat on a silver platter. And what do you do?” I snorted, shaking my head in deep censure. “…You throw it away.”

She shook her head vigorously. “It had to be done. This is what I’m supposed to do.”

“And I see that! But was this worth it, Piper? Leaving behind your squadron? Your friends? Your life? Why would you do such a thing?”

“I know I probably would be the type, but you, Piper?” I turned away from her a little bit. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand why you did what you did.”

She was hurting. I’ll bet she knew that her choice was crazy, even before she went through with it. And yet…she made it. She took me under her wing and in return I took her under mine, creating this insane and exceedingly misunderstood symbiotic relationship. She was amazing, but completely nuts. And everyone regarded meas the ludicrous one. At first it struck me how much what she had done bugged me; it seemed so perfect, the most brilliant way to send those wretched Storm Hawks on a spiraling array of emotional break downs. That was back when I hated them; actually part of me still hates them. But what she did was just…illogical.

She said nothing more to me, and I stared at her midnight blue head that was once again looking out her window at nothing in particular. I took her silence as a blatant disengagement, and I wordlessly left her by herself. I walked gingerly down the hallway to my room, closed the door behind me, and fell face down onto my bed; still unmade from my unceremonious sleeping habits.

How could she hold me those nights, stroking my slick oily hair and putting a cold washcloth on my burning forehead without feeling guilty about leaving them? How could she stick around and not consider going back to them when I took one of her projects and threw it out the window into the canopy of trees surrounding the mansion claiming that it didn’t have enough ridges for it to properly work?

I’d hate it if she left me. I hate it, but I’d understand. What mystified me is why she stayed. Why she did any of this. As dependent as she feels on me, I can’t help but think that she’s part of what made me Lark again. I didn’t have my blonde hair or those annoyingly cute freckles, but I was still Lark.

And in all honesty? Larkie girl didn’t like to think too much. Keeping troubled thoughts walled up in my head would have made me even more insane than I already am. Her decision had weighed on my mind heavily on some days more than others, but never had it really been broken to me that what she did was just so unsound. I thought perhaps, there was something other than virtue brewing under her skin; her beautiful dark skin. Something so self-centered that it even made me want to cringe. Mostly because I didn’t come to know a Piper that hoarded her desires.

Okay…okay.

What wouldn’t I know about the dark side of people?

Apparently my dark side came out quite a bit, even now when I wasn’t surrounded by people who feared me.

And it was coming out again, a little more literally than I would have liked.

Into my vision, like a light leaving the hallway.

My eyes rolled back into my head and I instantly felt my dirty blood straining to pump its way through my veins. Even though I was already lying down on my bed I felt as though I had fallen there after fainting. My body began to boil, what literally felt like flames scraping themselves against my insipid skin. Loud moans escaped my mouth. My teeth grinded together. My eyes were clamped shut and even if I opened them I knew I wouldn’t see anything. In the struggle to escape the pain even for a second I mused that death was probably so much better than dying.

My door flew open, but I couldn’t see it. Nor could I see Piper rushing in and gathering my upper body into her arms. I could hear her voice calling my name and her hands rushing all over me, feeling my pulse, and then holding her ear close to my lips to listen if I was still breathing. The sightless seconds went by, filled only by Piper’s shuffling as she held my torso close to her chest and the insane pounding in my head. I was sick. So sick. I needed a session. I hated them, but I needed one. Piper needed to treat me like I was; a dirty minded criminal who knew when it was time to put away the weapons and concede to a way of living that would attempt to change who I was. I dare it to succeed at that…but I didn’t have the urge to go back to the ruins of my fortress anymore; quite a huge difference.

I needed a session. I wanted to understand Piper’s mind. And part of me wanted to run from it too.

The light started to penetrate my retinas again, giving me my vision back. Once again I found myself looking in Piper’s sternly focused face. She helped me sit up, and I leaned my back into her palm flat against my jutting spine. My delirious mind wondered why her hand was there, holding me up because I couldn’t do it myself. Why was it there, instead of clutching the steel of the old cruiser that was once her home?

Her face was still stained with dried salty tears, but her voice had no miscellany that would suggest that she had been crying.

“We have to do it tonight.”

Had I possessed the strength, I would have nodded.

-0-

Down in the basement, Piper handed me my cloak that was cleaned and didn’t smell like dried blood anymore. But I took little enjoyment out of the fact that it smelled like fresh flower blossoms from the laundry detergent. My eyes struggled to focus on Piper as she began to converge the right resources that would soon be in my bloodstream killing off all of my defective cells. I had nothing to look forward to except a world of intangible dark matter. Piper was scrupulous each time she set up the pod for my treatments, making sure everything worked perfectly and wouldn’t malfunction in the middle of a session. It took me a while to contain my impressed mental comments when she told me that she built it herself, using the stolen blueprints from my old lab.

My fingers took a nervous reach and rested just barely passed my lips so my teeth could bite on the nail. Although it was difficult to ignore the symptoms, an upcoming session was far more ominous than anything I may have been feeling. Often I questioned why something that was meant to help me survive did such a good job of hurting me. I didn’t like to think about the pod; it may have helped me stay alive and dwindle on the border between living and dying, but its process made me hateful of its entirety. I never really found out why the growth that led to my birth was toxic, but it was moments like these that I cursed my father’s ignorant engineering crew for their stupidity.

But like many things, there was nothing else to do but deal with it.

My watery eyes stared at Piper who was now going down her checklist of things to monitor before commencing a function enhancement.

There had to be guilt focused behind those attentive corneas. Something that would depict nostalgic feelings for her old life.

Yet as she continued her manual scan, there appeared to be none.

The sun had set hours ago.

“It’s almost ready.” She said.

I narrowed my cloudy eyes, shaking my head. “Why the hell are you doing this, Piper?”

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I asked: Why are you doing this? Why are you making sure that something doesn’t go wrong? Why are you checking everything over? It’s like you dedicated your whole fucking life to making sure I don’t croak while you’re around.”

She set down her pad and stared at me, her challenging watch almost daring me to go on. Never dare me, because you bet your ass I’ll go on.

“I’m a fucking criminal. I used to love killing people, and part of me still misses it. What in the world possessed you to actually go out of your way and do this for me?”

My voice sounded like I was intoxicated; my speech was slurred and my lips weren’t moving properly to form the words I wanted. But I didn’t care that I sounded like I had a mental disability; she needed to know what I thought about her little decision. It may have been five years, but we probably would have gone for the rest of eternity without mentioning it, so what did it matter?

She looked at me for a long time without saying anything. I was about to tell her to just haul me into the pod so I wouldn’t have to deal with her seemingly non-responsive mood anymore, but finally she spoke.

“Because we both deserved it.”

I narrowed my eyes, but this time instead of being angry I thought about her enigmatic reply. I may have gotten a lot of things in life that I didn’t deserve, and in my opinion this was really no exception. Perhaps Piper deserved something grand in this life and this was what she considered to be grand.

As crazy as it sounded, I gave in.

God forbid Piper find out how I really think. The things inside of my head; they would scar her; mentally dismember her. I knew I could be a real loon, but in that department I was alone. Never did I once consider that maybe Piper would lose some of her sanity on her journey too. She was just so meticulous with everything she did, so it never crossed my mind.

“Do you ever want to go back?” I asked.

Blankly, she stared into the air. “Sometimes, just to see everyone. But to continue like the old days…no, I don’t want that.”

She went to the black side panel of the pod and switched it on. A loud humming noise began to ring out through the basement, and it was the last thing that threw me into the reality that I was really going in for another session. I cannot, cannot stress my trepidation for these things enough. It’s impossible. My legs started trembling, and not from their weakness. Each time, a request to just let me stay out here in the real world always wanted to come out of my mouth, but for some reason I always bit my tongue and refrained from asking. I had my sneaking suspicions that it was pride, but who knew; I only thought about the sessions in depth when I was about to be committed to one of them in the near future.

Suddenly, the urge to understand her way of thinking was starting to dwindle. The mysteries of some people were never meant to be solved; I should understand that better than anyone. If she wanted to leave her perfect life for the likes of me, then I should secretly be grateful; without her, my remains would be scattered in dishonorable places all across the world I once was dedicated to destroying. Anything was better than dying at the hands of those Sky Knights and their plastic entities they called ethics.

“Before I go in there, you have to agree to do something for me.” I said.

She nodded for me to continue. I reflected amusedly that it was like I was saying my last words. The session wouldn’t kill me, the exact opposite. But it seemed like every time I emerged after a few weeks or months or whatever amount of time I spent in the pod, I had died a little inside. Ah yes…something sentimental was in order. I normally wasn’t the type to oblige to such a rule, but…I needed certain things from this woman.

“Listen, Piper.” I said, trying to enunciate my words a little more. “If I go in there, you have to promise me you’ll leave someday.”

That blank stare again, asking me what I’m talking about. It was odd how an emotive Piper could be so easily replaced with an impassive one. Like that’ll deter me, though.

“I don’t know what you’re planning to do in your life, and frankly I don’t care. Just get out of here, and use what I’ve taught you. That would be enough for me.”

Still nothing. But her eyes were flickering as if saying ‘but…I wanted to stay here forever’. Foolish, foolish girl. She must have read my thoughts, because I know she doesn’t want to come off any more groundless than I already thought her to be. So she nodded slowly.

“…Okay.”

“Good.”

“Where will I go?”

I shrugged. “Go back to the Storm Hawks.”

“Like they’ll want to see me.”

“I doubt they’ll greet you with hugs and kisses.” I said sarcastically. “But maybe, once you leave, you should seek them out.”

Piper had this look on her face like she was trying to remember something long since past, buried in an alcove of her mind that she made sure to avoid during the normal hours of her days. At times I wondered if she even reminisced about the times before she tended to my useless body. I could be very open about myself when I wanted to be, and even though I hated to disclose it, she helped me open up quite a bit. I didn’t have a problem with people keeping themselves hidden from the world; after all I did it for years and it was a smart thing to do. I really couldn’t blame Piper for doing the same, even when she’s lived with me for such a long time.

I shrugged again. “I don’t care where you go. I’m not letting you stay here for the rest of your life.”

She seemed to understand, but she still didn’t just shut her mouth and accept that flat out. If she did, it wouldn’t be Piper who was talking, would it?

“And what about you?”

I wiped some sweat off of my forehead that probably wasn’t even there. “I’ve taught you everything I know. I’m not going to let it just marinate in your brain while you change my bloody diapers until we’re fifty.”

I didn’t give a damn what happened to me. She just had to leave eventually. Show the world what she was made of, like she could’ve done even without my help, but that’s something she’d never hear a word of.

When you got around all of the saving (or in my case, destroying) the world business, it was actually kind of sad; the kind of lives we were living. Granted I suppose we made our choices that made us who we are, but I can’t help but imagine ourselves as regular teenagers, talking on our mobile communicators and spreading gossip. Staying up late reading various books and manuals, on our stomachs while in bed, maybe a pet cat snoozing near our feet. Such a frivolous, but heavenly-sounding existence.

Instead, we were here.

Preparing for my treatment.

And my trembling was not going away.

Piper looked at me with something resembling sympathy. Never did she pity my plights, but given her compassionate nature she didn’t like to see anyone suffer to my degree. She knew I hated the sessions, I’ve told her before. But somehow the visual demonstrations of just how much I hated them were anything but conventional. She walked over to the closet and pulled out the tubes that she would soon be trying to gently inch through my skin and into the upper part of my spinal cord. It was such a disgusting feeling, but weirdly enough I felt a little better knowing that it was Piper’s hands attached to those tubes. She was just like that, giving me a wrong but vivid sense of security. If it hurt, I knew it wasn’t because of her.

I gripped my knee caps, trying to make them stop shivering. Piper came back with the tubes in her grasp, but she was staring at my pathetic reaction to the upcoming treatment. The way she was looking at me now made me want to look away because it was so abhorrently caring. Her palm came up to my boney shoulder.

“Are they really that bad?”

I wanted to spit in her face for saying something so ignorant, shout at her, retort something that would insult her intelligence. But her dark face bound me in that way. I only looked at her collar bone to avoid her eyes, and make several small quick nods.

“Why, what happens in them?”

She knew the scientific process, but the actual experience dodged her.

Honest to the core for one of the few times in my life, I said, “I can hardly describe it in words.”

She hugged me.

My initial reaction was startled, and I tried to tug myself out of her arms, but she didn’t let go, nor was she put off. Her face buried itself in my black unwashed hair, and her lips were so close to my ear. For a moment I forgot about the session, my bid for her to leave, and just…everything. I hated this. I wanted her to let go and stop feeding me those feelings that I could never truly earn the right to receive. But she just kept me here, my skinny torso against hers that was comfortably filled out, her heavy heartbeat still so filled with vivacity pulsing warmly against mine; faint and drained from years of fighting this disease.

It was times like this she reminded me of my possibly late Dark Ace; wherever he was, in this plane of existence or the next. So much like him, but there were more differences than similarities. It was once him who brushed my bangs that stuck to my dicey skin away from my face.

Her lips moved against my ear, and something slipped passed them that I almost didn’t catch.

“You deserved all of this.”

Being sick? The raid? The sessions? Her care? All of it?

She pulled away, ignoring the grotesque look on my face. Such contact still disturbed me.

“Would you like me to do it with you?”

I stared.

“You don’t want that.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but I cut her off. “Trust me.”

If this was curiosity, she just needed to throw that shit out the window. This wasn’t something she could follow through with me. This wasn’t something I wanted her to follow through with me. I wished a lot of things upon some people, but never did I go as far to wish a treatment on someone else. It was out of the question. I didn’t want needles in her neck like me. I didn’t want her to sit in the darkness like a piece of meat on a stick for the darkness to prey on like me. She didn’t need to experience this. She didn’t.

“I should.”

I still didn’t say anything. Just looked at her like the mad cow that she was.

“…in exchange for me leaving soon after.”

When I told her I wanted to leave, I didn’t consider it being so soon. Was she really going to leave me after this? I was suddenly faced with mulling over what she said.

“So what your saying is,” I said, the rasp in my voice not shielding my sardonic tone, “If I let you in the pod with me, drugged up and unconscious and all that fun stuff, you’re going to leave afterwards?”

“Hopefully, yeah.”

“Just how soon afterwards are we talking about?” I said.

“Asap.”

She was going to leave once it was done. Away from me and this lonely place forever, just like I wanted. But only if I let her inside the place I feared the most. I didn’t know for sure if it would be the same for her as it had been for me. Then, something painfully obvious came to mind.

“And how do you know it won’t be harmful?” I said.

“It won’t be.”

“How do you know?” I hissed.

“I built it, remember?” She said.

I was going to scold her, but the words got caught in my throat. Not out of tension, but because all of a sudden I started having small convulsions. No matter how hard I tried to breathe smoothly it stopped before it reached my mouth every time. Piper held my head up to try and keep my throat clear, hoping that I would breathe better, but it didn’t help. I grabbed her wrist.

“H-hurry…” I said. And that was all I could say. At this point I didn’t care what she did; I needed to be in the pod soon, or else I would just get worse and worse until I stopped functioning all together.

Since we would be sharing tubes the process would take longer to heal me. With the treatment serums in one tube for me and an extra dosage anesthesia in hers, she sank one into my neck and laid me down onto the platform before doing the same to herself. I was still shuddering uncontrollably. I was breathing easier, but the deathly tight strain was back in the pit of my stomach knowing what I was close to beginning. Piper pressed some sort of timer on the pod’s side, and laid down on the platform next to me. We were pushed into the pod and engulfed by the dark. It was just one big excuse to be near me, I knew that; but I didn’t say anything. I shook, and beads of sweat ran into my eyes and receding hairline. My flimsy hand gripped the weaves of my cloak. We would be going under anytime now.

“Feeling drowsy yet?” I asked quietly, smirking even while trembling.

“Uh-uh.”

Well that was obviously a lie. Her mumbled reply told me that not only was she already feeling the affects of the sedative, but she was scared. Who wouldn’t be? I certainly was. Soon we would both be encased in a sightless night from which there was no escape. She would feel her way around her bubble and feel nothing, while I just accepted my place and sat still for the amount of time I was stuck there. Her hand suddenly crept away from her side and the fingers laced themselves around mine, like soft feathery wings with loads of gained proficiency in their prints. I let my hand go limp in hers, not quite sure how to react to such a gesture.

I was sure there was far more narcotics in my tube than hers, and yet a few seconds later I heard her heavy breathing, signaling that she had fallen under before I had. Piper’s body was so close, so near. In a rare rush of imploration I wished we lain this way under different circumstances. Although it was hard to differentiate real dark and the dark during a session, I felt my eyelids close and my body teleport to that cursed place in which I would sit until it was time for me to face reality again. So there I sat, in my respective place. Usually I faced a few months or so of this, and at the very start I was run down from the dismal insight of how long I would have to be there. But even then, as I appeared to be alone in that chasm of acute seclusion, I could feel my hand still clasped in someone else’s. It was the only warmth I had ever felt in that place.

She would leave me. She would fight her own battles. I would wither away and die, and we would both accept that.

The warmth from my hand spread to my body, and before I could stop myself I indulged in the memory of Piper’s lips against my ear, the slender feel of her fingers entangled with mine that were thin and breakable, the way I clutched at her chest when she carried me bridal style after I would sometimes collapse right in the middle of a lesson.

I laid my head down on the hard invisible floor of my state, and for the first time, I detachedly slept within the pod.