Moments

Chapter 6: painted on my heart

The sloshing sounds came from his right, breaking his drugged dream, pulling him back into unwelcomed consciousness. Back into the excruciating pain, into the torrent of screams and cries that always pierced his mind whenever he would recover the slightest bits of awareness.

As always, he could feel the awfully tight knot in the pits of his stomach, and the compulsive way his throat constricted as nausea took over.

He was still alive… wasn't he…?

The world was a blurred haze of poisonous green that now crawled inside and out of his body. It was this thick, phosphorous substance that made his heart still beat, made his lungs still work. Submerged in it, he was as lifeless as a doll, slipping in and out of consciousness.

It usually were the other one's moves that disturbed him, that made him snap back to reality for the shortest of moments.

Sometimes he wondered if he felt the same… if he felt the needles and the knives and the tubes piercing his skin, sucking out brick blood, pumping the Mako in… If he could listen to all those pained voices, to all those desperate screams and know there was nothing left to do except to just… be. Be the human laboratory rat meant to be open and sewn back together as many times as someone wished, just to feed his sadistic medical needs.

If he were to try with all his might, he could force his lids to open ever so slightly.

And he would see the bright blur of a pristine lab coat behind the green, behind the thick glass. He would see the mad way the dim light reflected on the ever slipping glasses, and the faint outline of a sickingly pale hand moving them up on the thin, long nose.

Why did he remember all those details, when he couldn't remember even one more thing…? Was there anything else to remember…?

His numbed out limbs tried to move, as the pain in his head got stronger. Through the poison he saw one of his hands pressed against the smooth surface of the tube, fingers trying to dig into the glass.

The voice from the outside was harsh yet quiet, barely reaching his ears, yet somehow breaking through the screams, the constant buzz of bubbles inside of the tank. The voice that told him to calm down, that it won't hurt as much, that they won't do anything to break him…

Black started to form on the most outer corners of his mind, and his hand fell to his side, his heavy lids closing over burning eyes. The heavy, sickening feeling leaving him as once again he slipped into a drugged haze.

As if from afar the faint sloshing managed to reach his ears, not allowing him to hide in the darkness once again.

But he was tired and his body hurt so much already… He just wanted to pretend that this was not him, not his body, not his humanity sucked out by mechanical pumps…

'Cloud…'

A soft sound of a name he didn't recognize as his own rose from the storm inside of his head, with the greatest of ease drowning out the screams, and washing over his body.

And the voice seemed familiar, and it gave him something to cling to. Gave him the sliver of hope when he knew there was none.

Maybe there was something more to remember…. If he were to try hard enough…

'…you came… kept your promise…'

Maybe for now… he could try… hold on to… that …

The light danced deadly on the glasses, as the professor threw one look at the tube, seeing that the boy inside finally stopped moving, Mako once again claiming his mind.

One sharp brow wandered up as he wrote swiftly his observations in the log.

"C project:

Day …..

Specimen (A) code z: incerased movement.

Specimen (B) code c: unusual face muscle reaction caused by unknown factor.

Further test needed"