"You're very sharp, (Y/N)."
I glanced at the aged doctor beside me, who was carefully unweaving the long bandages wrapped around my arm.
"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked, slightly raising my brow.
"Most patients who wake up from a coma tend to be in a haze for quite a while afterwards. Extremely confused about everything," Dr. Joy explained, pulling away the last strip of the gauze and gently holding up my arm to inspect it. "You, on the other hand, caught up almost instantly."
I felt my arm ache from being raised up too high, my face slightly scrunching up in pain. "Oh... that's good then?"
"Of course." The doctor noticed my expression of uncomfort out of the corner of her eye, setting down my arm with a pat. "Excuse me dear, I'm going to open the dressing on your neck."
"Sure," I replied nervously, sitting still in my positon, really knowing what to do. "Go ahead."
There was no small talk this time when Dr. Joy unwrapped the bandages around my neck. I simply sat there in silence, looking forward with my slightly tilted head awkwardly. With Dr. Joy's skillful hands working away, it didn't take long until all the strips of the medical cloth were released. For the first time since I woke up, I felt the cold air of the room hit my nech, sending a shiver down my whole body.
I let out a shaky breath, feeling goosebumps beginning to rise on my arms. Dr. Joy was silent for a few seconds, staring at my with an expression I couldn't decipher. "Doctor, is it... okay?"
The aged woman sighed, fixing her glasses and straightening herself beside me. "Very much okay. Werewolf lords' are indeed magnificent beings," she murmured, putting her hands in the pockets of her white coat as she gazed at me in awe.
I frowned in confusion. "What?"
"One of your worst wounds was on your neck, but that healed completely a while ago. Up until now, there was a scar left there that never faded."
"And..."
Dr. Joy flashed me a smile. "It seems your wolf decided to get rid of those scars when you woke up."
A hand darted to my neck out of pure instinct, rubbing it and feeling around it for any signs of the previous battle wounds. There was none.
"But I didn't feel any pain," I argued, looking at my surroundings to see if there was a mirror of some sort. "When I heal, I always—"
The doctor cut me off. "Feel a burning pain, right?"
I stared at the brunette in shock, my mouth left hanging open. "....How do you know?"
Dr. Joy merely smiled in response, walking towards a shelf and taking out a mirror, before holding it up so that I could see my own reflection. "Have a look."
I wanted to question her what that smile meant and how the hell does she know, but curiosity got the better of me when I saw a glimpse of my neck. My eyes squinted, discovering that the doctor was indeed correct. There were absolutely no leftover scars or marks lingering on my skin, and it showed no signs of ever having a wound in the first place.
My eyes dropped down to my right shoulder, a memory flashing through mind. I remember vividly how fast Levi's claws were, how badly the stinging pain was as soon as he made contact, the feeling of my skin being ripped open, and the warmth of my blood flowing down freely out of the open wound.
My body shivered as I recalled the terrifying experience; my hands lowering to tug the hospital gown down to the side. I was greeted by more of the white gauze wrapped around my body, and the more I think about it, the more I realize just how much I looked like a living mummy.
A part of me already knew what it looked like underneath the layers of dressing, but I still wanted to see for myself. My fingers grazed the distinctive cloth, glancing up at the doctor for silent permission.
Dr. Joy understood what I meant in a heartbeat, nodding her allowance for my next actions. I pulled on the bandages, softly at first but gradually getting rougher once I felt no pain. After a few more seconds of intense tugging and yanking, all the bandages around my shoulder finally fell down to my lap. Even though I had been expecting it, the sight still managed to shock me for several seconds.
It seemed so surreal that an injury that long and deep didn't leave a single trace on my flesh or skin. Even a cut or a gash a child would get from playground accidents left their scar on them as a grisly souvenir from the tragic day.
(A/N: Hands up if you have one cuz I certainly do (*°▽°)ﾉ)
And although it was nice and relieving that I didn't have any, I still felt my stomach swirl uncomfortably anyways.
A sigh escaped my lips, my eyes returning to my smooth-skinned neck, void of any gruesome scars or reminders of the battle.
One of my worst wounds, huh...?
My eyes stared at the sheets blankly as my mind tried to recall why and how one of the worst wounds inflicted on me was on my neck. The battle replayed in my head — the growling, the yelling, the biting, scratching, wrestling coming back in a heavy flood of bitter memories.
The sensation of being choked and breathless suddenly came to me, along with the vision of Levi above me, pinning me to the floor and clenching down my throat until I couldn't breath. I gulped, rubbing my neck in discomfort.
That's one.
The next memory came back a little bit different, because it was more of me looking at my wolf fighting rather than me fighting Kenny myself. I watched in horor as the crazed black wolf chomped down on Ziahra's neck, blood immediately staining her white fur as she thrashed around to shake off his deathly grip.
At the time, I didn't feel the pain Ziahra felt, but the wound was there when I returned to my human form. And the pain only came once I transformed into a human again. Back then, adrenaline managed to block the worst of it off, but if it were to ever happen again...
No, I shook my head, refusing to think such horrible thoughts. Kenny's gone, everything is alright now.
Dr. Joy handed me the mirror, mumbling under her breath how her arm was sore from holding it for so long, which only made me feel guilty as fuck since I just realized she's been holding it this entire time.
The doctor took her board and ruffled around sheets of medical examinations, reading it and writing things down that I have no knowledge of. I brought my focus back on the mirror, looking at my face with a slight frown.
It's been one year and I look exactly the same, only.... worse. My (e/c) eyes were blank and dull, my skin was pale and my hair was a complete and utter mess. I had white werewolf ears poking out of my head and a long, bushy tail that I had no control of.
My back ached like hell and I could barely feel my legs. My breath was short and rapid, and it feels tiring to even sit up without leaning onto something. All the muscles in my body — other than the ones in my face — felt stiff and hard to move, painful when I tried to flex it by the slightest.
It seems that all my — would've been — fatal wounds were all healed, but I wasn't fully physically healed.
The mirror abruptly glistened as it hit the bright ceiling light, stinging my eyes. I angled it away from the light, slowly reopening my narrowed eyes, only to see something horrifying.
The person reflected by the mirror looked like me, but didn't at the same time. My skin was drenched in blood, but there were no visible wounds anywhere. One of my hands was gripping what looked like a kitchen knife, my tongue sliding down the silver blade as I licked the red liquid with a smile.
But my eyes were what scared me the most. They were pitch black. Like someone had gauged them out and left eye-shaped holes on my face where they were supposed to be.
Out of shock, my grip on the mirror faltered and it fell out of my hand, landing on my lap. Despite it no longer facing me, it still showed the exact same image, like a screen of a phone rather than a reflection. The girl licked her lips and grinned widely at me, sliding the flat side of the knife against her face, mouthing something to me.
At the same time at the back of my head, I heard a faint voice whispering, "Murderer."
Dr. Joy noticed my strange behavior and the mirror that had fallen out of my hands, placing down her board and heading over to my side immediately. "(Y/N), are you okay?"
I was too shocked and confused to answer properly. "Th-the mirror... it-.. I was..."
My words were jumbled, mumbled and incoherent to the doctor, judging from her furrowed eyebrows. I don't blame her; I don't even understand what I'm saying.
I'm hallucinating. It wasn't real. I'm hallucinating. It didn't happen.
Those words were chanted in my head as I reached out to take the mirror, shakily facing it towards me. A sigh of relief left me once I saw my reflection — messy, but still normal. And that's all I cared about.
"(Y/N)?" The doctor asked me again, her hazel eyes focused on me.
I shook my head. "I... I just got spooked is all. Sorry for making you worry."
That's right. I just woke up from a coma, it's normal for me to hallucinate things. Right? Well it better be because I ain't accepting any other answers.
Dr. Joy had a skeptical look in her eyes, but trusted my answer and left it at that, changing the subject. She bent down to pull a lever that allowed her to lower the bars on the side of the bed that kept me safe from falling. "Can you walk?"
Her sudden question startled me. I stole a glance at my legs underneath the sheets, noticing how weak they felt when I tried to contract the muscles down there. Turning back to the doctor, I shook my head. "I don't think so. I can hardly feel my legs."
She picked up her board and wrote something down using the pen that was inside her pocket. "How are your arms?"
For the past few hours, I've been moving them a lot more than my legs, but I also realized they felt stiff and sore when I fully straightened it or moved it around too much. "Better than my legs."
"Can you do this?" The doctor straightened one of her arms out in front of her, holding it in a steady, perfectly horizontal position.
My face scrunched up in displeasure upon seeing her actions. But I tried anyways, bringing my arm to level with chest and straightening my elbow as much as I can before it became almost torturous.
Dr. Joy placed a hand beneath my extended arm, supporting it and helping me keep it steady. She studied the expression on my face with a calm and curious look. "Does it hurt a lot?"
"Just... sore and exhausting."
The doctor nodded. "That's enough."
I let my arm flop back down with a heavy sigh, rubbing and clumsily massaging the aching muscles. Dr. Joy circled my bed, stopping at the bottom and pulling away the bedsheets that were covering my legs.
"Can you wiggle your toes?"
I was aware that this was all some sort of physical therapy for my limbs that had been left unused for an entire year, but somehow, hearing someone asking me if I was able to wiggle my toes made me feel embarrassed and sad that I had lost all the abilities to do the simplest of things.
Nonetheless, I bit my tongue and wiggled my damn toes like there was no tomorrow.
But even with my hardest efforts, I was still unable to move them as freely as I wanted, feeling an invisible rubber band of some sort holding each individual toe back. After about 15 seconds of vigorous wiggling, my muscles began to feel tired and I gradually slowed down.
"Tired?" Dr. Joy asked, looking up with an half-amused smile on her face.
I nodded, halting the movement of my toes before I was given the clear to do so. Dr. Joy didn't seem to mind, fixing her glasses and jotting something down on her papers, before setting the board aside.
"Okay, (Y/N). I want you to lay down and move your legs."
I leaned back onto the bed. "How do you want me to move it?"
"Let's start with bending your legs, one by one."
The task sounded ridiculously simple to anyone, even myself. But I knew after just one second how much of a pain this was going to actually be. My leg felt heavy and hard to move; stiff and no longer as flexible as I remembered it to be. It was so bad that Dr. Joy had to help me in folding it all the way.
The muscles around my knee stung as it was stretched, the pain almost becoming visible on my face. Luckily, Dr. Joy motioned me to straighten it back again, and I followed her command with relief.
She looked at me with her head slightly tilted down, her glasses slowly slipping down the bridge of her nose. "Again."
I could feel the expression on my face morphing to one of displeasure, to which the doctor quickly added, "The more you do it, the less it's going to hurt."
That's right, I thought, silently agreeing with the doctor's words. Stop being a pussy (Y/N). You've toppled over a cliff for fuck's sake. This is nothing in comparison.
*
The leg exercises continued for about an hour, and once I was finished, it felt like I had ran a marathon or something. I laid on the bed limply, my limbs aching in exhaustion and my eyes closed.
Dr. Joy had left a few minutes ago to get some water after I pathetically wheezed out just how thirsty I felt. Surprisingly, I didn't feel much hunger at all, despite not having have eaten for a whole year.
Well, that's not really true. I have been eating. Through a tube that was stuck through my nose connecting straight to my stomach. Minutes after waking up, I asked Dr. Joy and her daughter to get it out since it felt uncomfortable and was an unpleasant experience in general, with the exception that I must eat.
The sound of the door creaking open caught my attention and I glanced at the direction of the noise, freezing in shock at the sight before me.
The person who came in wasn't Dr. Joy, but a small, bloody girl.
The same girl from the mirror.
Every step she took left a red mark on the white tiles, her whole body tilting from side to side as she walked closer to my bed. In her right hand was the knife, soaked with so much blood that it continuously dripped to the ground.
She looked up, staring at me with her black-hole eyes, a wide grin on her face as she carelessly swung her knife in the air, the blade flashing white as it hit the light.
The girl stopped playing with her knife, bringing it up and pointing it straight between my eyes. Her mouth parted; her voice, her tone, her accent and her delivery painstakingly similar to mine as she yelled, "Murderer!"
My sore legs kicked out frantically, pushing me on the bed so that I was positioned as far away from the terrifying child, my eyes blinking several times to make sure this was all real.
It wasn't.
I blinked three times, and after the last one, the girl disappeared from my view and was replaced by Dr. Joy, who was standing and staring at me in concern. The floor was sparkling clean — not a single drop of blood was to be seen. And most importantly, there was no girl walking towards me with knife in her hands.
The doctor set down the bottle of mineral water and box of assorted biscuits on the table, sitting down on the chair beside me with a serious face. "What's wrong, (Y/N)? Be honest."
"I was—"
"Spooked by what exactly?" Dr. Joy cut me off, clearly wanting to know the truth, or at least what I meant in detail.
I knew I couldn't keep it from her much longer. "I just keep on seeing this.... thing. And hearing something."
The doctor's hazel eyes narrowed sharply. "Do you see and hear different things everytime or are they consistent?"
"Consistent. Definitely consistent," I replied with no hesitation, a shiver racking my whole body when I remembered her face — identical to mine.
Dr. Joy hesitated with her next words. "Does it feel like Nightmare?"
"What?" I was shocked that she openly asked about the cursed thing. From the way Annie had told me before, it seemed like all werewolves chose not to bring it up in any conversation often, if not, at all. "What do you mean?"
"I mean," she paused, leaning back and crossing her arms. "Did it feel like Nightmare's doing?"
From my experience, Nightmare had always appeared as a alluring whisper that wanted me to follow its command. But just recently, Nightmare came when I was drowning in my own guilt. It didn't even try hard to convince me, it just led my actions. Actions that would have made me lose all control.
This time, however, it was different. There were no convincing words, no overwhelming guilt and self-hate. Just a girl covered in blood, holding a knife and only saying 'murderer'.
I shook my head. "It doesn't feel like Nightmare... at least when comparing it with my previous encounters with... it."
"That's a relief to hear." The doctor sighed heavily, taking the bottle of water and passing it to me.
I took it from her hands gratefully, cracking the lid open and chugging down several gulps. The pleasure I felt from having water run down my dry throat and into my empty-yet-strangely-not-hungry stomach was indescribable. Once I felt satisfied, I closed the bottle and wiped my lips, before setting it aside.
My eyes wandered up, expecting to see hazel orbs, only to meet face to face with empty black ones. My body froze again as I stared into the nothingness of the girl, who was seated in a child-like manner in the chair previously occupied by the doctor, the blood from her face, skin and shirt staining the seat.
She pointed the knife at me, the tip dangerously close to my face, a grin on her lips. "Murderer," she hissed out, slightly thrusting the knife forward, making me flinch back.
"Who.. are.. you..?" I dared myself to ask, my voice coming out shaky and small.
If I was being honest, even without the question, I could've figured it out myself. Now that the girl was close to me, I was able see her more clearly. Beneath all the blood covering her pale skin, I knew. I knew without a doubt that that face, that (e/c) hair and hairstyle, those hands, that body — it was a younger version of myself. It was me as a child. But was it really?
I couldn't believe it; I didn't want to believe it.
After asking the question, the smile fell from the girl's face, an angry scowl replacing it within a matter of milliseconds, her hand clenching the knife tighter.
"A murderer."
She struck out, aiming for my head and I shrunk back, raising my arms in poor defense and closing my eyes shut as I braced for impact. The pain never came. A hand patted the side of my face, followed by a faint voice that was slowly getting stronger.
"(Y/N). It's just me, Dr. Joy."
The doctor gave a few more pats and gently rubbef my shoulders to tame my trembling body, and at last I was calm enough to open my eyes.
No black holes this time. Dr. Joy's hazel orbs shone with worry. "You saw it again?"
My head nodded lightly, eyes wide in alarm. "What... is it, doctor? Why do I keep seeing it? And why does it keep saying 'murderer'?"
I yearned for an answer to this newfound mystery, gazing at the chocolate haired woman in front of me with hopes that she knew even the slightest an explanation.
Once again, I had my hopes up too high.
"Honestly, (Y/N).... I'm not sure. What do you see exactly?"
I lowered my eyes, breaking contact as I gulped in fear and anxiety.
.
.
"....Me."
———————
I had trouble finishing this chapter, mostly because I wasn't so sure what the idea of it was (hence why it was all over the place).
(｡>ㅅ<｡)💦sorry…
Also the reason why it came out later than it usually did. (｡ﾉω＼｡) sorry again...
Hope you guys still somewhat enjoyed it
(´༎ຶ ͜ʖ ༎ຶ ')♡