Solstice and Eclipse: Part III

Chapter X: What Lies at the Ocean Floor

Pushing the hair out of his face, (L/N) ran his shaking hand along his forehead, wiping away the cold sweat from his clammy, pale skin. The sound of a dog barking and the subsequent cacophony of flapping wings had him lunging for the toilet bowl again. His throat burned and his ribs ached from the amount of times he'd violently thrown up in the last seventy-two hours.

When Mr. Saito had first introduced (L/N) to the blue and white capsules, it had been with the instruction of only taking two a day; one in the morning and evening. As he got older though, the dosage was upped to three, adding one with his lunch. He slowly built a tolerance over time until Mr. Saito, tired of the boy's pestering, gave him full access to the drugs, claiming he trusted (L/N) to know his body and its needs.

At first, he had limited himself to no more than five a day, and only when the headaches became unbearable. But five slowly turned to six, then eight. The years spent with Kendo saw an average of four a day. After she left though, his addiction became worse than ever, using the pills to numb not only the pain in his head, but also the aching in his heart. He took more and more until the world became a muffled haze and he was too tired to be sad. Now, at sixteen years old, he swallowed fifteen pills a day.

Mr. Aizawa had accused him of substance abuse and confiscated the blue and white capsules that had kept him sane for the past decade. The principal informed him that from now on, they would maintain strict supervision over his use of the drugs, and, based on the hospital's recommendation, begin weaning him off the pills completely until he was no longer dependent on them. They started him off at eight, spread throughout the day, one every two hours. It wasn't enough.

The doctors said the first week would be the worst. The noise was constant, incessantly hammering on his eardrums and bouncing around his skull so it rattled his brain. It was only five hours into the first day when he first threw up. Since then, he had practically lived on the bathroom floor. The noise built up a pressure in his head, and every twenty or so minutes the dam would burst.

By the middle of the second day, his skin had become a sickly pale and he broke out into cold sweats. He couldn't keep any food down; the textures were too grating and the taste too overwhelming. An angry red rash appeared on the third day, covering his arms, chest, and legs in painful sores. The shakes started on day four. He was always cold, and no amount of blankets were enough to warm him up. Day five he broke out into a fever so severe the doctors had to cover his body in icepacks to prevent him from having seizures and on day six the chemicals that burned his nostrils caused his nose to bleed.

The seventh day was the worst day yet. He hadn't slept in over sixty hours, and he suffered from constant hot and cold flashes that kept him covered in sweat. He'd stopped eating because he could feel the way his stomach turned and how his intestines slithered and stretched, painfully aware of every step of the digestion process. And the headaches had become so bad that he'd nearly passed out, but the blood trickling down his throat from his still bleeding nose would creep down his windpipe and the coughing would keep him conscious.

(L/N) had to be fitted with a nasogastric tube that afternoon. Still sweating from every pore and unable to replenish the water his body was losing; he was suffering from severe dehydration and malnourishment. In just the past week he had lost fifteen pounds (6.8 kilograms). The feeling of the tube winding its way through his sinuses and into his stomach had him wanting to vomit, but his muscles were so fatigued that he simply didn't have the strength.

By the eighth day, a Saturday, (L/N) couldn't even feel the pain anymore. It was still there, he knew, but his brain just couldn't process it. He was too tired. Any strength he had was spent just by breathing. The doctors told him it was a sign that his body was finally reestablishing a new chemical equilibrium.

It was just past noon when, from somewhere off in the distance, he heard the door to his hospital room open. There were some garbled voices he couldn't understand and a familiar relaxing scent that his sleep deprived brain couldn't place.

"Hello, (L/N)." A muted voice said. "How are you feeling?"

He barely registered the warmth of someone's hand resting itself atop his own. Instinctively, he rolled his head toward them and came face to face with a charred corpse. It's face was like charcoal, but its features bore the resemblance of his mother.

"Are you alright?" The blackened carcass asked, its lopsided jaw crumpling to ash as its mouth moved. "(L/N)?"

With a terrified yell, (L/N) yanked his arm out of his dead mother's grip. A powerful force surged from his body and rippled throughout the room. It cracked the windows and knocked over the monitors and IV stand next to his bed. His mother yelped in fright as she was knocked off her feet.

Breath came to him in panicked gasps as the world slowly faded to the familiarity of empty darkness. A pained groan came from the floor, and as (L/N)'s breathing calmed he slowly recognized the scent of peaches and a fresh spring day.

"Y-Yaoyorozu?" Rolling onto his side, he tried to reach for her, but a strong pair of hands forced him back into his bed as the doctor and several nurses rushed into the room to check in on the disturbance.

The pulse oximeter was replaced on his finger and the Holter monitor connections reestablished. The doctor's hand pressed against the side of his neck as she checked quickly checked his pulse while one of the nurses reset the monitors and IV stand. The second nurse helped Yaoyorozu to her feet and gently guided her towards the door.

"W-Wait. I'm sorry." (L/N) whimpered exhaustedly. He tried to reach out towards Yaoyorozu, but his arm was too heavy, and she had already been escorted out of the room. "I-I didn't mean to... please... c-come back." The doctor took hold of his arm and placed the tip of a syringe at the crook of his arm. "I'm sorry, Momo." He whispered, as the sedative entered his bloodstream. "Please, don't... don't leave."

There was a deep pit waiting for him on the other side of consciousness. Screams of agony and anguished cries echoed from its depths and coiled around him like an arctic fog, enveloping him in its icy embrace. It pulled him closer to the edge, to the emptiness of the pit, and then he was falling. The screams grew louder in his ears as he fell, the sounds of people who had left him but whose voices had not. He heard their screams and their cries and their hushed whispers. Over the echoing wails other voices hissed in his ear, reminding him why he would forever be alone.

At the bottom of the pit was an ocean. As he fell into the freezing waters the voices became garbled and indistinguishable. The pinprick of light from the pit's opening slowly disappeared as he sank deeper and deeper in the cold, dark waters. His screams were swallowed by the oceans depths as he struggled to swim back towards the surface, but there was a weight that took hold of him and pulled him deeper. He reached out his hand, desperately hoping for someone to save him, but after years of sinking, that hope had long since left him. As time passed, he became numb to the cold. The crushing weight of the water's pressure became the only embrace he knew, and over time, he learned to embrace it back. Further he sank, but he was no longer afraid of the ocean. Why would he be? After all, it was his home.

But just as his back hit the ocean floor, he felt something. The water around him had somehow changed. Curious as to what had found its way into his home, (L/N) swam closer towards the new feeling until he found its source: a fissure. Heat radiated from the ocean vent, and he quickly backed away, afraid it might burn him. But the warmth was so comforting, and it lured him in. Cautiously, he approached it and reached out a wary hand, but the heat was unfamiliar, and it scared him. Still, something about the fissure kept him close, and from its mysterious depths he thought he heard someone calling his name. He had the strangest feeling their was something lying beneath the ocean floor. Something waiting for him.