Awakened [Hakuouki Fanfiction - Okita Souji x OC]

#0

The only recollection was fear.

Intense fear. The kind that kept your adrenaline soaring sky-high, kept your heart banging, kept your skin burning. The kind that told you death was right on your heel.

Legs burned, breaths short and sharp. All the muscles in the body begging for just the shortest break.

Yet stopping was not an option.

They needed all the distance they could cover—even if it was just a few steps ahead.

Someone was ahead; she could sense it, but she couldn't know who it was.

All she knew to be true was that she and this person were running for dear life.

Everything else was drowned in the sounds of fierce battle, and the flames licking, dancing, like countless demonic arms that threatened to rip the sky in half.

Then suddenly, she was no longer running.

×××

She was on the streets, all alone, snow falling quietly around her.

Snow.

Beautiful for the rich, deadly for the poor.

Then again, everything worked this way, didn't they?

She barely had any rags to cover herself up, much less warm clothes. Somewhere in the back of her famished mind was trying to remember a cave she'd found somewhere on the outskirts of the forest...perhaps she could stay there for the winter, and survive on wild nuts and berries.

But she never got to that thought in time.

×××

When she was aware of reality once more, she sensed someone holding her hand. Festivities, quiet roads, the smell of food, the smell of ink, the sound of brush on paper...like a collage, all drifted into view. Whoever that was holding her hand—she knew he was a father figure. She couldn't see him very clearly, but she just knew it. She knew it was him. His kind voice, patiently talking her through everything they saw, answering her every question, teaching her everything he knew.

×××

She watched the images flow past her, as if she were just someone on the sidelines, watching another's story.

Why am I...seeing all this?

All was quiet.

...Too quiet, she thought. She could see things happening around her, though, and they were not the scenes in her head. 

Wood splinters, scraps of metal, logs, and blasts of yellow and orange that lit things up a bit more once in a while.

A frown wrinkled the space between her brows.

Where is this?

Not somewhere she was accustomed to, that much was certain. 

Where am I?

Her arm moved. It was odd: she clearly felt her arm trying to wave, or flail, around, but for some reason, it didn't feel like hers.

The faintest sounds reached her ears: it sounded like a thunderclap, yet something about it felt different...off. 

She tilted her head towards the source of the sound, and her field of vision shifted, warping slightly—

Then it hit her.

The realization struck deep, and she felt like she'd just been thrown off a cliff.

She was underwater.

And she was drowning.

Only then did the lack of oxygen take effect. Like a ninja that'd been lurking in the shadows, waiting for this very moment, it ambushed her, pounced onto her: crushing her airway in its vise-like grip, sucking all the strength within her body, and whittling away at her consciousness.

Then all faded into naught.