Author’s Notes: God, it’s been awhile since I’ve worked on
this sucker. Hopefully it’s not going to
be as emo anymore, haha. This one moves fast, so pay attention. Blink, you’ll miss it.
shat·ter
(shăt’Ər)
“No.”
“Why the fucking
hell not?”
“We’ve already been through this. I don’t want to risk it.”
“Risk it?!” He slammed his fist, knuckles first, into the
table before the other man, rattling the glasses there. “You haven’t wanted to ‘risk it’ for three
years! Three years!”
“You don’t even know if he would want to leave…”
Cha was quiet for a moment, silently
raging at the man before him. Then
softly, he said, “I’ve waited long enough.
He’s alive. I’m alive. I’m going to go get him back. You can either help me, which would be much
appreciated since I only have one hand to hold a gun, or you could sit here and
know you’ve sent me to my certain death and sentenced another man to suffer for
the rest of his life.” He turned on his
heel and strode to the door.
“Take whoever will go.”
He smiled and walked out.
*****
Gackt blinked and rubbed at his eyes with
his one hand while the other clung desperately to the sheets. “Cha…?”
His voice was soft, hesitant.
It was painful to see such raw disbelief
in those eyes. Cha reached out and
touched the other man’s arm and caressed his cheek. “We have to go, Gaku.”
“I’m going with you this time?”
He blinked at the ‘this time’ bit. How
many times have we done this, Gaku?
“Yes. You’re coming with me. But we have to go now. We can’t stay.”
“Why are you scared?” Gackt asked. “I’m the only one who can see you.”
Cha took a deep breath, searching for
something that would make sense to the other man. “We have to hurry because…because it would
look strange if they saw you wandering off on your own. If we hurry, they won’t stop you, and you can
come with me.”
That seemed to work because the other man
threw off the sheets and stood up, stumbling a bit when his full weight rested
on his feet. Wrapping his arm around the
taller man’s waist, Cha asked, “What’s wrong?”
“My feet hurt.”
“Why do your feet hurt?”
Gackt sighed and rolled his eyes. “I told you before – the beat them till they
bleed, so they hurt too much to run off.”
Cha heard someone in the party curse while
the others shifted around the two of them, suddenly anxious over this new
development that significantly hindered their escape. He turned to them and said, “Stick to the
original plan. Watch your backs. I’ve got him, so someone cover our backs. Be fast.
Be silent. Let’s go.”
*****
He awoke slowly, as out of a fog. There was no sudden awareness, no burning
sensation when the sun hit his eyelids, no red glare behind them. This didn’t frighten him right away – perhaps
he’d awoken in the night. He still had
some time before they came to fetch him for whatever he was to be used for that
day.
But as he lay there, he heard men talking
around him. There was a cool hand on his
forehead and he sighed. But cool hands
were out of place. He blinked his eyes open
and looked around. He lay on a cot in a
dark room, surrounded by people he didn’t recognize. Or at least didn’t think he recognized.
“Gacchan?”
He hadn’t been called that since… Looking
up, he found himself staring up into the smiling face of a man he should have
recognized, knew he should have known. The
memory was floating somewhere in the ether of his mind, desperately clawing at
stable ground.
“What…?”
“We rescued you,” the man answered,
“Well…I didn’t rescue you, the others rescued you. Including—”
“Hyde…”
The man above him glanced over his
shoulder. “Oh right,” he murmured. Glancing back down at Gackt, he smiled. “That part’s still a secret for some reason.” He shrugged.
“Hyde?” Gackt asked, rolling the name over
his tongue. It tasted familiar. Old, but familiar. The man smiled down at him. “Where am I?” Gackt asked, his throat going
dry as he sat up.
“We’re…” Hyde paused and seemed to ponder
the question. “I’m not really sure. I wasn’t the one with the map when we came.”
“I’m cold,” Gackt observed, wrapping his
arms around himself. His teeth chattered
behind his lips.
“You should probably get another blanket,”
Hyde observed. “I’ll go get you another
blanket.” With a nod more to himself
than the other man, he stood and left Gackt staring after him.
He left him. He left him alone. Gackt sniffed and rubbed at his eyes.
“Oh good, you’re awake.”
Startled at the new voice, Gackt jumped
away and pressed his back up against the wall he hadn’t noticed his cot rested
against. If your back was against the
wall, they couldn’t hurt you there. His
fingers clawed at the wood paneling. An
older man smiled down at him. He had
glasses and a black bag. Gackt eyed the
black bag with growing suspicion.
“Where’d Hyde go?”
“To get you another blanket, I think.”
“He left.”
“Yes.”
“Is he coming back? Who are you?”
“Yes, I’m sure he’ll come back, so long as
someone doesn’t distract him. My name’s Nakamura. I’m the group’s doctor. I want to give you a quick examination to
make sure you’re not hurt.”
“But I am hurt. Why’s it cold? Where am I?”
“I noticed your feet,” the doctor said,
ignoring the other two questions. He
bent and opened the black bag.
Gackt pressed himself tighter against the
wall, trying to push himself deeper into the paneling, into the grooves and the
deep places. Maybe he could hide in
there with the dust. “I’m cold,” he said
again. “Who are you? Where’s Hana?”
“Who?” the doctor
asked and looked up.
“Hana. The nurse who brings the medicine every day.”
“What medicine?”
“The medicine for
my head.”
The doctor paused and looked closer at
him, leaning forward. Gackt pulled his
face away. He was too close to his
eyes. “What does this medicine do?” the
man asked.
“Makes me do whatever they want me to do.”
The older man pulled away and sighed. Glancing over his shoulder, he said to the
other men in the room, “They’ve been drugging him. I don’t know for how long.” Turning back to Gackt, he reached out to
touch him. Gackt flinched and pulled
away. With another sigh, he told him,
“Whatever they gave you, you don’t need it anymore. You’re all better. It’ll be hard without it for awhile, but you
don’t need to take it—”
“Yes I do.”
“No you—”
“Yes.”
The doctor paused. “Why do you need it?”
His body shaking from head to toe, his
muscles suddenly taut and burning, Gackt leaned in, nearly brushing his nose
against the other man’s. “Because you
don’t know what’s in my head.”
*****
He was screaming.
Hyde hid under the blanket he had brought
earlier and covered his ears with his hands, trying desperately to block out
the noise coming from down the hall.
“God!” shouted Tetsu,
slamming his fists on the table. “What’s
wrong with him?”
Cha paced back and forth across the small
room, his one good arm wrapped around his thin waist. “You have to let me see him,” he pleaded with
the group’s doctor.
“In the state he’s in right now?” Nakamura
asked, shaking his head. “He could very
well rip you apart. That wouldn’t help
anybody.”
The older man gritted his teeth and
grinned. “I was a rockstar
in a previous lifetime. I’ve dealt with
my fair share of drug overdoses and withdrawals. You have to let me see him,” he said
again. “He could kick the shit out of
me, I know…but it could also help.
Hell,” he added, laughing bitterly, “at least he’d stop screaming for a
little while.”
Hyde grinned at this. Popping his head out from under the blanket,
he looked up at them from his place on the floor. “Screaming is bad. Thus, no screaming is good. Q.E.D.,
bitches. I vote that we send Cha in to
deal with doped-up Gaku.”
Without further comment from the other men
in the room, Cha stepped into the room and quickly shut the door behind
him. Gackt sat in a corner, his body
curled in on itself.
His face was buried in his hands and his shoulders shook, but for the
moment, his screams had ebbed. With a
shuddering breath, he crossed the room and rested a hand on the other’s
shoulder. Gackt jumped and stared up
into the other’s eyes. He blinked
several times as recognition dawned in his dark eyes, silent tears rolling down
his cheeks.
“I dreamt about you a lot,
during my…hallucinations and nightmares.
You always came to me at night, and…I rarely understood why you weren’t
there in the morning.”
“You thought I was dead,” Cha
whispered, taking a seat beside the other man.
He pulled gently at Gackt’s shoulder. With a groan, the other man pitched forward,
burying his face in Cha’s neck and wrapping his shaking arms around his
ribs. Cha winced at the force there, the
withdrawal-induced power. Running his fingers
through the other’s hair he asked, “Why did you believe them?”
“They
showed me your ring,” Gackt answered, sniffing and rubbing at his eyes. “I remembered talking with you about it. You said you couldn’t get it off…”
Cha
shifted his weight and slipped his robe from his shoulder to reveal what was
left of his shoulder. He watched Gackt’s eyes drift from his face to the stump then
back. “It was the only way I could get
out,” he told him with a shrug. “They
would have burned me alive otherwise.”
“They
were after me,” Gackt whispered. “They
were always after me. From the
beginning…”
The
older man shrugged again and ran his hand through his dark hair, no woven with
silver. Gackt closed his eyes and
pressed his body close. Suddenly trapped
against the wall, Cha shuddered. It had
been so long since he had been here. His
arm shook as he returned the embrace and burying his face in the other man’s
neck, he sighed as tears welled in his eyes.
Gackt stretched his legs out on the floor and pressed his face against
the elder man’s neck. “You’re warm Cha…”
The other let his head fall back against the wall as tears glided down his
face. “Thank God you’re warm…”