My Heart Beats NOT For You

Heartbeat . . . Or Not?

The first thing he noticed was the cold. A chill that filled his lungs and spread down to the tips of his fingers and down to his toes like ice in his blood. Numbing. Heavy.

The second thing he noticed was the sounds. Like voices, but too muddy to make out. There was a rumbling like thunder past his ears, drowning out everything else in a crescendo of noise before suddenly, nothing.

After what seemed like an agonizing amount of time, Cassian found that he could move his fingers again. Then his hands, his arms, legs—slowly feeling began to come back to him as warmth rushed through his veins.

He coughed, once, twice, then managed to peel his eyes open. He was made aware of the fact that he was on the floor—a bathroom floor—if the slanted view he had of several toilet stalls was anything to go by.

One: gross. Two: why?

Cassian let out a groan of pain as he attempted to sit up. The sound only did well to alert him of a mild headache, and a pain in his chest. Strange. Wait, no, that seemed right. He'd been shot there, hadn't he? But then why was he here? Hadn't he fallen into water? Was it a hospital? No, that didn't seem right—they'd been trying to kill him, no one would have saved him from that, so then, why?

Reaching out for the edge of the nearby sink, Cassian used it to leverage himself to stand, wobbling slightly as he did so. Fuck, he was dizzy.

Head spinning, his eyes wandered to the reflection next to him.

. . .

That wasn't his face. Also, holy shit that was a lot of blood.

Splattered down the front of the white shirt were crimson stains with a distinct smell of iron. Judging by the streak of it smeared on the corner of his mouth, he could only assume it was his, but why? Regardless, this wasn't his face—he was sure of that! He looked like a kid! Sure the hair and eye color was similar, but this was definitely not him. He'd never had a scar like that on his cheek—and . . . Cassian paused, eyes falling to something just under the collar of the shirt.

His hands moved to unbutton the collar to get a better look. It took him longer than he'd like to admit to undo just three of the buttons with the way his hands shook; his eyes widened when the fruits of his labor revealed horrible scarring down the front of his chest.

From his left shoulder down to past where he'd opened the shirt ran a long pale scar and underneath that centered around a thin piece of metal—stark centered in his chest—looked like a burn of some kind. He could see remnants of surgical scars too as well as a light dusting of freckles. What the fuck happened to this kid?

"—what's up? The patrol later? Yeah, I—"

Cassian froze at the sound of the voice, eyes darting to the bathroom door as it swung open. He hadn't expected someone else to come in, and clearly said person hadn't been expecting to see anyone either if his surprised expression was anything to go by.

"—I'm gonna call you back, seonbae." the redhead in the doorway frowned, stowing his cell phone in his pocket.

There was an agonizing few moments of silence as the two of them stared at each other.

"Am I . . . interrupting something?"

"Huh?"

"Your shirt—it's uh . . . wait is that blood? Are you ok?!"

The red-headed boy's expression suddenly shifted and he quickly closed the gap between them.

"H-hey, don't touch me—"

Cassian hardly had time to voice his displeasure before he found himself on his knees, retching at the sudden taste of metal in his mouth. Coughing into his palm revealed splatters of blood, leaving him with more questions than answers. He barely registered being lifted until the redhead was already halfway down the hall.