Chapter Text
He hears them, but the words are muffled and incoherent.
He makes out that he had a name, but he couldn’t hear exactly what it was.
He feels the doctor adjusting his blankets, but he cannot even move his fingers as a response, as an indicator that he is aware of his surroundings.
Not that he would have anything else left to say to the doctor. Or Anna, for that matter. Though, if he were to ever miraculously wake up again, which he was sure fate would find some way for him to do so given his miracle luck(or was it to just to prolong his suffering?), he should start calling her Nina.
Nina. What a wonderful name. It was the Russian equivalent of Anna. Everything is interconnected, as always, and his twin once again broke away from their bonded identity only to escape to the other side of the same coin.
He knew, now, that he had made a mistake. On that fateful rainy night, when Bonaparta came. His unending paranoia had backfired. It was a mistake that cost his separation from his other half, who had not even deigned to acknowledge him after the incident. He cannot feel guilt, but surely, enough of it can be made up by the unending whirlpool, sea of nothingness residing deep within him, and had he not been nothing but a vacuum, sucking the asphyxiating waters deeper and deeper in, never seeking repentance, perhaps it would have overflowed.
The sea started off as just a small puddle, it had surely been there since he was born, and grown to a pond from their mother’s betrayal.
Perhaps if Nina had forgiven him that night, the pond could have been siphoned out, retired to the puddle it had once been. But there was no point entertaining that train of thought now, because everything is null and void, and he had been the one to send the both of them, every one of them, to be drowned inside his very own atlantic ocean.
An ordinary human will be suffocated by guilt, regret, hurt, and maybe many, many complex emotions, swallowing him from the inside, like the monster from The Nameless Monster. But was he even human anymore?
He had all the characteristics of a human. The limbs, a beautiful brain, a beating heart. He spoke their language and looked into others’ eyes to see their soul. But others could not look into his eyes and see his soul. He had no emotions that separated the being of a human from other animals of lower intelligence, or if he did have those emotions, they were so deeply dissolved within the oceanic compound that it would be impossible to seek back now. If they were even there still. Thus, was he now reduced to a mere animal?
There was no use in mulling over melancholia. He waits, and waits, and waits. One visitor comes after the other. Footsteps echo on endlessly until one blends into the other. He can still identify and separate them, but their context never changes, the pity and depression that permeates the air through every visit never fails to reach him. Ahh, the irony. The pity they feel for the very man they aimed to put a bullet through.
And what a shame, for they never succeeded.
And they would likely never attempt so again. Without a doubt, this was his divine punishment.
He tries again. His finger never moves. The sensation was not alien to him— he had experienced the inability to grasp at his body during the drugged stay at Kinderheim 511, had felt was it was like to be completely ripped away from bodily autonomy, had even imposed it upon himself during the brief periods of dissociation where everything was just too much, too little, all at once and everywhere. But that had been within his control for the most of it. Before, it was like many, many curtains, separating his body from his mind’s reach. But now, it was a concrete wall instead.
He would not be able to claw his way through.
And oh, how cruel, was fate in allowing him to listen in on reality, giving him just the slightest to play with, but never enough, never enough to make him feel enough , never enough to give him enough energy to claw through the restraints and return to his body. It was not even merciful enough to kill kim altogether, but he supposed he didn’t deserve it, after all that he has done.
It was just a matter of time, now before fate decides that he has rested enough. Before he would inevitably be released back into the real world to deal with everything again, like a petulant child whose parents just opened the locked doors to his room after a fitful tantrum.
If only it was as simple as that.
His prayers were answered on a sunny morning towards the end of spring. Her flowers had grown strong but the heat had yet to settle in. Munich had never been particularly hot. It was a cold year, befitting of the body it was about to begrudgingly welcome back onto its land.
It surely had been a year, or more than a year. His muscles had atrophied. Not horribly to the point of being unable to be looked upon without disgust, but it was a new level of bad health, even for him. Ah, but his body had never been durable. He did not get his own hands dirty often. He had not needed to, but it had also been out of necessity, because he was physically incapable of committing those acts by himself. It seems that Nina remains the physically superior half.
Somehow, despite it all, between the two and far in-between bullets that found home within his brain, his mind persisted. It was, perhaps, the only redeeming quality of his, beside his superficial face. People never seemed to see through the pretty, european, and ever-perfect features. But he had always been ugly. Ugly, in the way one cannot achieve just by having distorted features. He was ugly. There was no doubt about it.
His mind may have been a beautiful thing, if not for his psyche. That was the ugliest part about him. He does not know which one of them had been the weak one. The one who dared not let the monster show its true face, or the one that brought everything down with him in his self-destruction?
He let his fingers dance on the bed a little, before attempting to sit up. It was horribly hard. Has it always been this hard to live? Pain and bone-deep fatigue saturated every inch of his body. His muscles soon gave way underneath the weight of gravity and he sank back down onto the mattress.
He tries again, next to move his legs. Good, they were functioning. At least, he had been lucky enough to regain all bodily functions. A miracle for the lack of any substantial brain damage. He must have gotten off lucky with just migraines and dissociation.
There was an IV attached to his arm, he quickly realises, and he attempts to move off the bed.
The machine connected to his arm is beeping more urgently, now, and he must make his move before they are alerted to his reawakening.
In all possibilities, whoever comes to interrogate him, he will most likely be able to sweet-talk his way through their mind and supposedly turn over a new leaf. But he did not want anyone to be notified of his awakening before he plans them to, and Nina and Dr. Tenma will naturally be the first to know.
It’s not, of course, that he couldn’t face them. He could perfectly. It’s just that there was no need to impose any more stress and grief upon the both of them, more than the amount he had been able to pull from them altogether. If he could feel emotions, he would be feeling bitter right now. Bitter at the doctor for failing to pull the trigger and saving the monster a second time, bitter at Nina for the forgiveness that came way too late. Or was it his turn to forgive her now? Was he even able to process such a complex emotion?
He managed to shut down the life support and monitoring machine before it would alert the hospital staff, and quickly assessed his surroundings. They were so foolish to put him in a room with mere windows and doors to shut him out from the outer world…
Perhaps it was too hasty to exit now. He will have to come back to tie up the loose ends with the hospital staff later. Certainly he would not have regressed in his ability to manipulate the staff into letting him go easily…
There was a wetness, familiar and warm, falling down his face, and as it cools down it left only a piercing coldness upon its wake. Cold like every other part of him. He is cold, now, as he collapsed onto the marble hospital floor, away from the blankets that kept him warm. But he has always been cold, and his physical inferiority has not stopped him insofar, so he will just have to carry on.
Without a purpose, without a destination, he makes his way with much difficulty to the windows on cold bare feet. And then the room is empty, windows open.
He had forgotten to make the bed.